His Creation
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1n NKJV).
We stand on the mountaintops and marvel at the breathtaking views around us. The rhythmic sounds, the beauty, and the vastness of the sea transform us as we walk along the shores. On a clear, sparkling night, the brilliance of the heavens captivates us as we gaze into the reaches of the universe beyond the glow of our campfires. Our thoughts are thoroughly renewed when we walk down a path in the woods by a clear, bubbling stream. We are awed by the magical beauty of the trees and flowers as we watch them change and go through their life cycles. We may think of these deep-moving emotional responses as getting close to nature, but we are coming under the influence of the mighty power of God.
Underneath the physical beauty of this perfect creation is a brilliant, equally overwhelming structure. Beginning with a building block that we call an atom, He constructed it all. The atoms, so tiny that they cannot be seen with the most powerful microscopes, contain a nucleus of protons and neutrons. Spinning electrons, one for each proton, revolve in high-speed orbits around the nucleus. The pattern of one body rotating on its axis and revolving in an orbit around a nucleus is repeated in the universe’s grand design. The whole scheme is held together by a balance between the pull of two forces – gravity in the nucleus and centrifugal force on the revolving body.
God changed one element into another by changing the number of electrons and protons in atoms. By combining the atoms in different formations, He created molecules, and with molecules, He structured His mighty creation. By fusing four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, there is a combined loss of matter, which is converted into energy with a mighty explosion. By using this method, He created powerful continuous nuclear explosions that have become the stars that span the universe.
He placed planets around some of the stars, and they follow the standard pattern of creation by rotating on their axis and revolving in orbits around the stars. This formation is called a solar system. Within our solar system, planet Earth, the home base of man, is approximately ninety-three million miles from our star, the Sun. Our planet is not considered a large one. Yet, it is seventy-nine hundred miles in diameter, twenty-five thousand miles around the circumference, and covers an area of almost fifty-eight million square miles. Our solar system has nine planets, and our most distant sister planet is Neptune, which is approximately two and three-quarters billion miles from the sun. Our solar system ends where the sun’s gravity is no longer effective – perhaps fifty billion miles from the sun.
God created billions of stars, perhaps some of them with a system of planets. The approximate distance between our sun and its nearest neighbor star is twenty-five trillion miles. God grouped stars into clusters containing billions of stars, which follow the same rotating and revolving pattern. Our entire solar system spins on its axis, the sun, and revolves in orbit around the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about six hundred million billion miles. Because our minds have difficulty grasping these numbers, distance in space is usually measured in light years. Still, God did not stop with the galaxies – He grouped many galaxies into the same pattern of rotation and revolution! We are told that the universe is still expanding.
What language did God use to communicate the mechanics of His creation? He used the language of mathematics. It is the universal language that is spoken around the world. This is why mathematics can be traced to the beginning of civilization. It is the underlying basis of the laws of all the universe’s mechanics. We should keep in mind that numbers are scientific! It has been said that the “study of Astronomy is the oldest numerical science.”
The breadth and depth of the creation stagger our imagination, but we are just as overwhelmed when we look at the details of His life support systems. God combined some little atoms with others in a different way to form living molecules, which we call cells, the basic element of life. The human body contains sixty trillion of these little cells – grouped together in many different ways to perform all our life functions. They come in different shapes and sizes, but everyone carries the complete blueprint to rebuild us. Each cell contains twenty-three pairs of chromosomes – twenty-three from each of our parents. These chromosomes contain the genes, the basic units of our inheritance. There are hundreds of genes in each of our chromosomes. They establish a blueprint for us with instructions on the color of our eyes and hair, the texture and color of our skin, and the length of our arms, legs, fingers, and toes. They determine thousands of other details that we don’t even know.
Remarkably, only two kinds of human cells live without conforming to the twenty-three-pair rule. There are only twenty-three individual chromosomes in our egg cells and sperm cells. When an egg is fertilized, the new offspring will receive a set of twenty-three chromosomes from each parent. The fertilized cell will continuously divide until there are over two trillion complete cells when the child is born. Each of these cells contains the complete blueprint for the physical characteristics of the new person.
Creating from a single cell, the complex, interactive system of parts that make up a new person is truly remarkable. As each stem cell divides, it is programmed to become part of a brain, a heart, a lung, a kidney, an arm, a foot, or some other part that is necessary to the final product. All the members of our bodies are so well connected and coordinated that they provide life to the whole person; however, taken separately, they will soon die.
The psalmist said, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Ps. 139:14, NKJV).
We stand in awe as we grasp the details of His creation. However, our finite minds cannot comprehend all of it. Medical science is still trying to understand the mysteries of our bodies. The human mind simply does not have the capacity to comprehend the breadth and depth of His creation. Yet, there are some people who say it all fell into place by accident.
There is another surprise – who was it that created this vast universe? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1-3, NKJV).
God, the Son, the second person of the Godhead, created the heaven and the earth. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the Lamb of God, who humbled Himself to become man so that He could die for our sins.
All this power and wisdom is at our disposal if we would only ask, for He has said: “call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jer. 33:3, NKJV). For in Him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3, NKJV).
What a paradox – we choose to go our own way and try to solve our own problems when we could have the wisdom and knowledge of God available to us if we would only ask.
How many among us can truly believe that all of this just happened by accident?
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible, copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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