CREATION
Related Index Topics: God, Testimonies of Faith.
1. God could have made the sun to rise
Without such splendor in the skies;
He could have made the sun to set
Without a glory greater yet.
He could have made the corn to grow
Without the sunny, golden glow;
The fruits without those colors bright,
So pleasant to the taste and sight.
And caused the apple trees to bloom
Without the scent that doth perfume
Those dainty blossoms, pink and white,
That fill our hearts with sheer delight.
He could have made the ocean roll
Without such music for the soul-
The mighty anthem, loud and strong-
And birds without their clear, sweet song.
The charm of kittens' dainty grace,
The dimples in a baby's face--
All these are "extras" from His hand,
Whose love we cannot understand.
The God who fashioned flow'rs and trees,
Delights to give us things that please,
And all his handiwork so fair
His glory and His love declare.
Yes, He Who made the earth and skies
Gave "extras" for our ears and eyes,
And while my heart with rapture sings,
I thank Him for the "extra things."
--Margaret K. Fraser
2. "Man ploughs and plants, and digs and weeds,
He works with hoe and spade;
God sends the sun and rain and air--
And thus a garden's made.
"He must rejoice who tills the soil,
And turns the heavy sod,
How wonderful a thing to be
In partnership with God!"
3. The probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the complete dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory.
4. If a universe could create itself, it would embody the powers of a creator, & we should be forced to conclude that the universe itself is a god.
5. Posterity will some day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the Creator.--Louis Pasteur
6. If the good God were suddenly
To make a solitary Blind to see
We would stand wondering all
And call it a miracle;
But that He gives with lavish hand
Sight to a million souls we stand
And say, with little awe,
He but fulfils a natural law!
--Huw Menai
7.Creation's dawn was deep in night,
When suddenly: "Let there be light,"
Awakened grass, and flower, and tree,
The deep blue sky,' the earth, the sea;
Then, to complete creation's span
In His own image, God made man,
And signed His name, with stroke most sure--
Man is God's greatest signature!
--William L. Stidger
8. Once I was a tadpole a-beginning to begin,
Next I was a toad-frog with my tail tucked in,
Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree.
But look at me now, I'm a Ph.D.
9. Sometime ago, a female moth of a rare species was placed in a room. Four miles away a male moth of the same species was released. In spite of the din and smoke of the city, in spite of the distance, and in spite of the fact that the female was in a closed room, in a few hours the male moth was found beating its wings against the window of the room in which the female was confined!
10. Tagged salmon released from Columbia River Point spend four years in the Pacific, then consistently return to the spots from which they departed thousands of miles away.
11. The adult May flies of some species have no mouths and stomachs because their mature lives are too short to need them. The plant lice under laboratory tests, have produced ninety-four generations without the interposition or birth of a single male. Carpet beetles have lived two years in a corked bottle with nothing whatever to eat save the cast-off skins of their own transformations.
12.Hornets and wasps were the world's first manufacturers of paper. The manner in which they enlarge a little nest smaller than a hen egg into one as large as a half-bushel measure without disturbing its symmetry or opening up its interior, is a masterpiece in building. The katydid and crickets hear with their front legs, in which are located the ears that catch the music of their sweetheart's songs. Among short-horned grasshoppers, their ears are in their abdomen, immediately back of and above the point where the hind legs emerge from their bodies.
All of these give evidence of design and an omniscient Designer, of law and an omniscient Lawmaker.
13. The solitary, sublime, simple reason the Bible gives for the existence of everything in all creation is that it came into being by God's will, because He chose that it should. For the unbeliever, no further explanation is possible; for the believer none is necessary.
14. Said George Gallup, world-famed statistician, "I could prove God statistically! Take the human body alone. The chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity!"
15. To avoid using DDT and other pesticides, more and more U.S. communities are turning to nature for help. The latest to do so are Claremont, Calif., and Albuquerque, N.Mex., whose residents have imported thousands of ladybugs to control millions of sap-sucking aphids. Claremonters report that ladybugs are cheaper than chemical sprays: $85 for 375,000 ladybugs vs. $180 for a chemical spray used in Claremont last year.
Moreover, a single ladybug devours as many as 40 or 50 aphids a day. Ladybugs are also easy to handle. The gardener should first cool them in his refrigerator to make them drowsy, then remove them at sunset and spread them around. When the bugs awaken, they are hungry. They gobble away until most aphids are gone.
16. Pearls are delicate and require care. They must be worn frequently and close to the skin or they fade and die. This is perhaps because, as a product of the oyster, they are partly of animal origin. The most noted specimen was the famous "Theirs Necklace." of 145 finely graded rose pink pearls. When Madame Theirs willed them to the French Republic, they were placed in a museum and, never worn.
In time, they lost their color and lustre. A "pearlmother" was found for them, who fondled them and wore them publicly under guard, and their beauty returned. We are told that pearls must be worn against the human flesh to retain their life and lustre. In fact, it is so important they be worn, that banks where pearls are stored hire girls for that purpose. The girls sit a specified number of hours and wear pearls which clients have left with the bank for safekeeping. These pearls are kept "alive" by human contact.
17. That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy. --Jonathan Swift
18. The creation is both a monument of God's power & a looking-glass in which we may see His wisdom.
19. To create requires infinite power. All the World cannot make a fly.
20. On a single antenna of an ordinary June beetle, there are as many as twenty thousand olfactory pits. The bombardier beetle employed gas against his enemy centuries before the Oriental invented a stinkpot or man resorted to gas warfare. The dragonflies have eyes with as many as thirty thousand facets, to furnish the intense vision required in capturing darting, fast-flying prey.
21. When temperatures fall toward the freezing point, wise motorists put antifreeze in their radiators. Many wise insects do much the same thing, reports biochemist Fred Smith of the University of Minnesota. What's more, their antifreeze is glycerol (glycerin), a chemical closely resembling the ethylene glycol that is the basis for many antifreeze brands.
Working with Dr. Peter Dubach, Douglas Pratt and C. M. Stewart, Professor Smith was studying the hibernating larvae of wood-boring beetles, trying to isolate the enzymes that digest the cellulose on which the insects live. But when he ground up the larvae and analyzed the juice, he was surprised to find a considerable glycerol content. Since the active summer larvae do not contain glycerol, he guessed that the larvae possessed a mechanism that reacted to cold producing glycerol to keep their tissues from freezing in the Minnesota winters.
To check his theory, Professor Smith experimented on black carpenter ants, which are easy to collect in quantity. Hibernating adult ants proved to have as much as 10 percent glycerol in their bodies, but when the ants were gradually warmed up and became active, all of it disappeared. Chilling the ants for a few days at a temperature just above the freezing point restored the glycerol again. Ants of the same species found in warmer Maryland had no glycerol in them. But when taken to Minnesota they did as Minnesota ants do, secreting their personal antifreeze against the cold.
22. If the earth were as small as the moon, the power of gravity would be too weak to retain sufficient atmosphere for man's needs; but if it were as large as Jupiter, Saturn, or Uranus, extreme gravitation would make human movement almost impossible.
If we were as near to the sun as Venus, the heat would be unbearable; if we were as far away as Mars, we would experience snow and ice every night even in the warmest regions. If the oceans were half their present dimensions, we would receive only one-fourth the rainfall we do now. If they were one-eighth larger, our annual precipitation would increase fourfold, and this earth would become a vast, uninhabitable swamp!
Water solidifies at 32 degrees above zero. It would be disastrous if the oceans were subject to that law, however, for then the amount of thawing in the polar regions would not balance out, and ice would accumulate throughout the centuries! To prevent such a catastrophe, the Lord put salt in the sea to alter its freezing point! (Psalm 104:24)
23. Gold is impervious to the ravages of time. It is not tarnished by air, water or most corrosives; & it can be melted down time & again without shedding any of its quality. A single ounce can be drawn out to make an unbroken wire 35 miles long or hammered into a sheet 1/250,000th of an inch thick.
24. Scripture answers three basic questions to which the evolutionary theory has no answer whatever. These questions concern the origin of matter, the origin of life & the origin of man as a religious being.
25. The cocoon of a silkworm can be unreeled to provide a filament over two-thirds of a mile long.
The spider is so well supplied with the silky thread for making its web that a scientist once drew out of the body of a specimen almost two miles of thread.
26. Some say that science and the Bible are not in harmony, that they are antagonistic one to another. But the fact is not only that they are in harmony, but the Bible often has anticipated discoveries of science by thousands of years, and many scientific references in the Bible have now been proved to be true. Let us look at some examples.
It is generally regarded that Columbus (1451-1506) was among the first to establish the fact of our earth's roundness, yet centuries before, the Hebrew prophet announced--'It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth' (Isa.40.22). Moreover, when our Lord spoke of His second coming He referred to a night scene (in bed), a morning scene (grinding), and a midday happening (men in the field), and showed that all these things would be witnessed simultaneously when He appeared, which of course is an indirect reference to the rotundity of the earth.
It was recently discovered that the moon had an influence on plant life. But in the Bible it has been foretold--'For the precious things put forth by the moon' (Deut.33:13,14), which gives evidence of the fact that the writer knew of the power of the moon to affect plant life thousands of years ago.
Dr. Harvey (1578-1657) was the first scientist who discovered that the life of the flesh is in the blood. But thousands of years ago Moses wrote--'the life of the flesh is in the blood' (Lev.17:11). Scientists have analyzed the body of man and discovered it is made up of 14 elements. They have also analyzed the dust of the earth, and found it also is composed of 14 elements. 'God formed man,' Moses tells us, 'of the dust of the ground' (Gen.2:7).
Sir Isaac Newton, father of physics, established the law of gravitation in the seventeenth century. But thirty centuries before the advent of Newton, Job wrote--'He stretcheth out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing (Job 26:7). In the year 1643 Toricelli invented the barometer and hence discovered air has weight. But centuries before, in the sacred book it was written that 'God makes weight for the winds' (Job.28:25).
Galileo was the first to discover that the number of stars is uncountable. But 2,200 years before Galileo, Jeremiah said that 'the host of heaven cannot be numbered' (Jer.33:22).
The law of transmission of light is vividly described in these passages--'Let there be light and there was light' (Gen.1:3) and--'By what way is the light parted' (Job 38:24).
It has been truly said by Sir John Herschel, the famous astronomer, 'All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truth contained in the sacred Scriptures.' (1Pet.1:25)
27. Sea life is home of teeming forms of life, from microscopic floating plants to the largest mammal--the whale, which can weigh over one hundred tons. Among its dwellers are over 40,000 species of mollusks & over 20,000 kinds of fish. Gen.1:20 says, "And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life!"
28. The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.
29. Consider the "small, blackish deep-sea fish" popularly known as the "black swallower." It sometimes swallows fish much larger than itself. Some have been caught distended with fish inside them two or three times their own size. Their stomach, mouth and throat are distensible, and their teeth can be pressed backwards. Their throat and stomach stretch like a rubber balloon. This monstrosity did not evolve; it was made that way as a unique creation, to show the versatility of our God.
30. Astronaut James A. McDivitt, who orbited the earth 62 times with Edward H. White II aboard Gemini 4, said in a talk at the foreign press Club in Rome: "I did not see God looking into my space-cabin window, as I do not see God looking into my car's windshield on earth. But I could recognize His work in the stars as well as when walking among flowers in a garden. If you can be with God on earth, you can be with God in space as well."
31. Beneath the cover of the sod
The lily heard the call of God;
Within its bulb so strangely sweet
Answering pulse began to beat.
The earth lay darkly damp and cold
And held the smell of grave and mould,
But never did the lily say,
"O who will roll the stone away?"
It heard the call, the call of God,
And up through prison house of sod
It came from burial place of gloom
To find its perfect life in bloom.
32. Earthworms are among the most lowly of wildlife. From an average size of a few inches to the largest recorded in Scotland of more than 55 meters long, they have very important functions to fulfil. By tunnelling through the ground, they aerate the earth. They break down organic matter so that the fertility of the soil is increased. It has been estimated that 50,000 worms to an acre produce 18 tons of earth-casting a year. This is sufficient to add a three-inch layer of topsoil in 20 years' time.
33. Half a century ago, Professor Williams of Franklin College, Ohio, published a book demonstrating The Evolution of Man Mathematically Disproved. He showed by the most careful calculation that if the first human pair had lived 100,000 years ago--some evolutionist say 2,000,000 years ago, or longer-the present population of the world (at only one tenth the rate of present net increase) would now be 4,660,210,253,138,204,000; or two and one-half billion times as many people as at present!
34. The sun is like a vast hydrogen bomb burning slowly. Every second, 4 million tons of hydrogen are destroyed in explosions which start somewhere near the core, where the temperature is 13 million degrees Centigrade.
More energy than man has used since the dawn of civilization is radiated by this normal star in a second.
The earth's entire oil, coal and wood reserves would fuel the sun's energy output to the earth alone for only a few days.
Tongues of hydrogen flame leap from the sun's surface with the force of 1000 million hydrogen bombs. They are forced up by the enormous thermonuclear explosion at the core of the sun where 564 million tons of hydrogen fuse to form helium. Material at the core of the sun is so hot that a pinhead of it would give off enough heat to kill a man 1 million miles away.
35. In South America is a curious little spider which has its home under the water. It forms a bubble about itself in which, like a diving bell, it sinks to the bottom of a pond river. It will remain there for hours, living below, and yet breathing the air from above. When it returns to the surface it is found to be perfectly dry. Not the slightest moisture will have penetrated its capsule. It is in the water and yet separate from it, maintained by contact with the beyond.
36. John Jensen, and Iowa State Senator who has introduced the bill to require the teaching of Creation alongside Evolution, argues that there is no fossil evidence of any one animal developing into another. He says, "I'm a farmer & we're raising better cattle than we used to. But when we cross cattle, we get cattle, we don't get dogs!"
37. If you meet a fellow who claims he descended from a monkey, don't argue with him...because, after all, he knows his family better than you do.
38. The sun is a great power plant. If you were to mark off one square yard on the sun you would find that it is giving off 70,000 horsepower of energy continuously. There are a tremendous number of square yards on the sun's surface: more than 10,000 times the number of square yards on the surface of the earth.
Suppose that we decide to buy the energy that the sun gives off for a period of twenty-four hours. Suppose we can buy this energy for one-fourth cent per kilowatt-hour. To pay for this energy in silver dollars would require enough money to cover the United States four miles deep.
This represents a tremendous amount of energy. Yet when God created the sun, He had to put into that act of creation all of the energy that has come from the sun and all that which may yet to come from the sun. There is still enough energy in the sun to last for some thirty billion years.
39. There is a fish belonging to the angler group that can puff itself up by swallowing water until its stomach is distended like a balloon. Presumably this tactic is to render it more difficult for a predator to swallow. The spitlure frogfish, as it is called, has an even cleverer device. On top of its head is a built-in wormlike appendage with a jointed base. When not in use it is rolled up to one side of the dorsal fin, but in action it is waved around so that it looks for all the world like a juicy fishworm. The moment a likely victim comes near to investigate, the fish swallows it in one king-size gulp.
40. For more than forty years the Piltdown man was an honored member of the society of "earliest humans." Then a startling discovery proved him to be an enormous fraud.
In early 1912 fossil hunter Charles Dawson brought the first finds of the Piltdown man to the British Museum. Immediately the finder became famous, and soon other fragments of the "Missing link" began coming in from Dawson. The find was even named "Eoanthropus dawsone--Dawson's Dawn Man."
However, forty years later scientists found that Dawson had deceived them. The jaw had come from a modern ape with the faker "fossilizing" it by staining it mahogany with iron salt and bichromate. An oil paint, probably red sienna, had stained the chewing surfaces of the teeth. Further tests revealed every fragment of the Piltdown a forgery. It was probably the greatest hoax perpetrated on the scientific community in history.
41. Among the reeds that line the banks of the river swamps in the East Indies is a most unusual fish that has remarkable skill with which to secure its prey. It is called the archer fish, but it doesn't shoot arrows; it shoots drops of water from its mouth. Catching sight of a fly or spider, it shoots out a jet stream & with surprising accuracy can bring down an insect as far as three feet away. Actual photographs have been taken of such a fish "shooting" its victim.
42. The heart is a hard-working marvel. It can keep on beating automatically even if all other nerves were severed. And what a beat!
It beats an average of 75 times a minute, forty million times a year, or two and a half billion times in a life of 70 years. At each beat, the average adult heart discharges about four ounces of blood . This amounts to three thousand gallons a day or 650,000 gallons a year--enough to fill more than 81 tank cars of 8,000 gallons each.
The heart does enough work in one hour to lift a 150-pound man to the top of a three-story building, enough energy in twelve hours to lift a 65-ton tank car one foot off the ground, or enough power in seventy years to lift the largest battleship afloat completely out of the water.
43. In 1833 Charles Darwin went to the South Sea Islands looking for the so-called "missing link." As he studied the cannibals who lived there, he concluded that no creature anywhere were more primitive, and he was convinced that nothing on earth could possibly lift them to a higher level. He thought he has indeed found a lower stratum of humanity that would fit this theory of evolution.
Thirty-four years later he returned to the same islands. To his amazement he discovered churches, schools, and homes occupied by some of those former cannibals. In fact, many of them wore clothes and frequently gathered to sing hymns. The reason was soon learned: Missionary John G. Paton had been there proclaiming the truths of salvation! Darwin was so moved by their transformation that he made a generous contribution to the London Missionary Society. Darwin's "missing link" thus remained missing.
44. Imagine a group of men, working entirely in the dark, constructing a building as complex as the American Empire State Building and, fitting it with central heating and a fresh-air system. This is what the termite, that incredible builder, does when it builds its home.
In Africa, these constructions are so numerous that they transform the landscape. Each home has at its center the "royal quarter" where the Queen lives with her king.
The Queen lays nearly 50,000 eggs a day and has a life span of ten years, but the population of each nest is controlled by frequent migration of the termites to find mates.
The home maintains a temperature of about 86 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity at 98 per cent, with ventilation assured. How they manage to achieve this is a marvel of engineering. The walls are built up to 18 inches thick with cooling fins on the outside, each containing hundreds of air shafts. The hot, stale air inside the home passes along these air shafts and goes out through pores in the wall. Fresh air is drawn to replace it.
To keep the air at the right temperature, hundreds of tiny workers in the air passages control the conditions by sealing and unsealing the many air shafts, according to the conditions of the temperature outside.
Some of these structures reach 20 feet in height. We can therefore imagine what remarkable builders these termites are.
45. There is a plant in Jamaica called the "life plant." It is almost impossible to kill or destroy any part of it. If you detach a leaf from the plant & suspend it by a string to a wire, it does not wilt & die. It sends out threadlike rootlets which imbibe sustenance from the moisture of the air. New leaves begin to grow.
46. Even though your brain will forget more than 90% of what you learn during your lifetime, it may still store up as much as 10 times more information than there is in the Library of Congress with its 17 million volumes.
47. Darwin realized that the fossil record did not support his evolutionary speculations, but he had faith that subsequent finds would fill the gaps. However, more than a century has passed and the hoped-for evidence has not turned up.
In the book Darwin's Biological Work, first published in 1959 and again in 1970, geologist John Challinor, an evolutionist, admits that the fossil record only "partially supports evolution," and significantly adds that it also supports "separate and independent creation."
48. The longest flight made by a homing pigeon was the 7,200 miles that one flew in 1931 from Arras, France to its home in Saigon, Vietnam. To demonstrate that homers are not guided by landmarks, the bird was taken to France in a covered cage aboard a ship that crossed the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The pigeon--straight as an arrow and over "unfamiliar" land--returned in just 24 days.
49. The ear is as much an acoustic marvel as the eye is an optic one. The inner ear is like a keyboard with 15,000 keys, because that is the number of different tones that can be detected. Not only does the ear perform the function of hearing, it acts to control equilibrium as well. Who but God could have originated such a dual purpose instrument?
50. I know nothing of the origin of man except what I am told in the Scriptures, that God created him. I do not know anything more than that, & I do not know anyone who does.
51. Our hours are nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.
The thrush gets up at 2:30 every morning. He rolls up his sleeves and falls to work at once, and he never stops till 9:30 at night. A clear nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.
The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he lays off earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.
The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning, and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals--meals of caterpillar mainly--in the long, hard, hot day.
52. All nature, including man, is a wondrous instrument of many strings, delicately tuned to work God's will & upon which He plays with a master hand.
53. Science tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction, only transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute part of His Universe, doesn't it make sense to assume that He applies it also to the soul of man?--Wernher Von Braun
54. Peter the Great, when he saw sunrise, would express his wonder that men should be so stupid not to rise every morning to behold one of the most glorious sights in the universe. "They delight," said he, "in gazing on a picture, the trifling work of a mortal, and at the same time neglect one painted by the hand of the Deity Himself. For my part," added he, "I am for making my life as long as I can, and therefore sleep as little as possible."
55. Sometime ago I came across a story about a group of men who set out to find an answer to the question, "Where did the earth come from?" They compiled much data covering many areas of investigation and then fed it into the mammoth computer. When they had completed their work and had given the machine all the information, they pushed the "answer" button and waited expectantly for the results. Lights flashed! Bells rang! Buzzers sounded! When the great moment arrived this printed message emerged: "See Genesis 1:1."
56. What are the heavens, the Earth, the sea, but a sheet of royal paper, written all over with the wisdom & power of God?
57. Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
58. Anything may be reproduced on scale model except the Universe. The impossibility of making such a model accurately is shown by the fact that if the Earth were represented by a ball only one inch in diameter, the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would have to be placed nearly 51,000 miles away.
59. There's not a tint that paints the rose
Or decks the lily fair,
Or marks the humblest flower that grows,
But God has placed it there.
There's not a star whose twinkling light
Illumes the spreading earth;
There's not a cloud, so dark or bright,
But wisdom gave it birth.
There's not a place on earth's vast round,
In ocean's deep or air,
Where love and beauty are not found,
For God is everywhere.
60. There has been discovered in the forests of India a strange plant which possesses to a very high degree astonishing magnetic power. The hand which breaks a leaf from it immediately receives a shock equal to that produced by the conductor of an induction coil.
At a distance of nineteen feet a magnetic-needle is affected by it, and it will be quite deranged if brought near. The energy of this singular influence varies with the hour of the day. It is all-powerful about two o'clock in the afternoon, but is ineffective during the night. At times of storm, its intensity increases.
61. Snowflakes have six sides. It is claimed there are no two snowflakes alike, yet all are hexagonal in shape. An eminent scientist, J. Wilson Bentley, devoted his life to the study of snowflakes. He photographed over 10,000 flakes. He found no two exactly alike, though all have six sides. He claimed that the entire countryside from Maine to California might be covered with snow a foot deep, yet no two flakes would be exactly alike.
62. Snowflakes falling, twisting, swirling
There upon my window sill,
Who of Heaven's great designers
Traced your lace with such great skill?
Soft and fragile web of myst'ry
Falling on my window sill
I shall wonder, ever wonder,
Whose hand held that magic quill.
--Julian L. Janus
63. I read about a minnow-like fish called "Four eyes" which makes his home in Central & South America. What's unusual about him is his large, bulging eyes. They are so situated on his head that he can spend his time cruising along the water with only the upper half of each eye above the surface. The top half has an air lens & the bottom half has a water lens, which amounts to a set of bifocals, giving him the ability to see in both the upper & under world.
64. Some feel that great antiquity of men is necessary to produce the present population of over 4 billion. This apparently is not the case.
If the flood did occur 4,300 years ago, & if only the people in the ark survived on the whole earth, there would still be sufficient time to produce the present population. Even if each two people produced, on the average, only 2.6 children in their lifetime the population of the earth would then double each one hundred years.
Doubling the population each one hundred years for 4,300 years would produce a population of 10,000,000,000,000. This is 3,000 times our present population. No, the population of the earth alone does not require a great antiquity of men.
65. The camel is enabled, by the peculiar construction of its stomach, to carry a supply of water sufficient for seven or eight days together. This power adapts it to the region in which it is found, and to the service of man in traversing the desert. It has, also, great acuteness of scent, and, when ready to fail through the weariness of a long march, will detect the distant stream or fountain. Then new vigour animates it, and, sniffing the air, it strides on till it can imbibe the refreshing waters.
66. "I am not so much of a farmer as some people claim," said Hon. W.J. Bryan in his lecture on "The Price of Peace", "but I have observed the watermelon seed. It has the power of drawing from the ground and through itself 200,000 times its weight, and when you can tell me how it takes this material and out of it colors an outside surface beyond the imitation of art, and then forms inside of it a white rind and within again a red heart, thickly inlaid with black seeds, each one of which in turn is capable of drawing through itself 200,000 times its weight.--When you can explain to me the mystery of a watermelon, you can ask me to explain the mystery of God."
67. Mackay of Uganda, the missionary to Africa, tells how one day he saw a colony of soldier ants suspend themselves by their bodies joined together & extending from the ground upward through the air to a piece of meat suspended from a branch of a tree, thus forming a sort of Jacob's ladder of themselves. Upon this ladder the feebler members of the ant colony climbed, & supplied their wants.
68. The problems of origin & destiny have escaped the philosopher & the scientist, but the humblest follower of Christ knows the answer to both.
69. There have been a number of serious mathematical computations which have to do with evolution, and improbable to the vanishing point. Probably the best known case is the symposium on the Mathematical Challenge to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, held at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in 1966. It was there that a French mathematician told that when a computer was programmed to give the probability of an evolutionary advance, it jammed.
The interpretation of this was that the probability was less than one chance in ten to the one thousandth power! In his closing remarks this man said, "Thus, to conclude, we believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current biology."
Probability is expressed as a fraction and hence certainty is 1 and impossibility is 0. On this basis to be helpful to the evolutionists, the author assumed that the probability of evolution being true (if there were no gaps in the fossil record) as .999, which then makes the probability of creation the difference between this and 1, or .001. But there are at least 13 well-documented gaps in the fossil record, and actually there are very many more. But again favouring the evolutionists by using this very conservative figure of 13, and putting these numbers in the formula, the result is that the probability of evolution being true is about one chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Thus, even if assumptions are made favouring the position of the evolutionists, they cannot complain if it still comes out in favour of creation, which it does.
70. The Bible-Science News Letter reports that research chemists at the Interior Department's Coal Research Center in Pittsburgh have developed a process of waste conversion that produces just over a barrel of crude oil from each ton of garbage. The chemists mix wet, ground garbage with carbon monoxide and steam under pressure at about 700 degrees for 20 minutes to form a substance which is 40 percent crude oil and 60 percent water. Since science has discovered that man can make oil in 20 minutes, perhaps scientists will be willing to believe that God did not need 50 million years to do the same thing.
71. The theory of the evolution of man is based on suppositions & inferences. As an example, the first chapter of Charles Darwin's book "The Descent of Man" contains within a few pages, 20 expressions of uncertainty, such as "seemed", "it appears", "take for granted", "may", & "implies". The concluding chapter of 14 pages has more than 50 such expressions. Within 30 years after publication the book was changed in 87 places.
72. We may see God's glory blazing in the sun & twinkling in the stars.
73. In the year 1798 Bonaparte, with his army, entered the town of Denderah, in Central Egypt. There he found two interesting and seemingly ancient temples. From one of them the roof, carved with certain figures, was carefully taken down and carried to Paris.
When examined there by learned men, it was found to be what is technically termed a zodiac, and from certain marks they inferred that it was at least seventeen thousand years old. Soon after this discovery, and under its influence, a professor in the University of Breslau wrote a book with the title, An Invincible Proof that the world is at least ten times older than Moses supposed when he wrote the book of Genesis." Many believers in the Bible were very much startled by this discovery, and for a time they were in much fear of mind.
But some time later Champollion discovered the method of reading such inscriptions as were found on this zodiac; when he carefully examined it he discovered, among other things, the name of Augustus Caesar inscribed upon it, proving that it was no older than the Christian era.
74. The seed of the globe turnip is about one-twentieth of an inch in diameter, and yet, in a few months, this seed will be enlarged by the soil and the air to 27,000,000 times its original bulk, and this in addition to a bunch of leaves. It has been found by experiment that it will, under fair conditions, increase its own weight 15 times in one minute. Turnips growing in peat ground will increase more than 15,000 times the weight of their seeds in one day.
75. Salt is a wonder, Salt is composed of two poisonous substances. How is it possible that salt, which is necessary to life, is composed of sodium and chlorine, either of which, if taken individually, would kill you?
Water is a wonder. Its chemical formula is H2O. That means it has two parts of hydrogen for each part oxygen. Oxygen is flammable; hydrogen readily burns. Unite hydrogen and oxygen into water and you put out fires with it!
76. A French scientist named Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, examining a wasp's nest in 1719, noted that it seemed to be made of a type of crude pasteboard. After further investigation he discovered that most of the material was obtained from tree fibers. As a result of this study the first successful production of paper from woodpulp was achieved. Yet God had instilled this ability in the wasp at the dawn of history.
77. Every one of God's works is in its way great. All angels & all men united could not make one grasshopper.
78. There are several trillion hard-working cells in every person.
A cell is so small it takes 250 of them, placed side by side, to equal the diameter of a dot. Inside the membrane of each cell, swimming around in the cytoplasm, are about 200 of these wiggling, squirming particles, each one a living and active chemical laboratory, a food and energy factory.
Inside of each of these cells are about 200 wiggling mitochondria. Each one of these would be about 1/50,000th the size of a globe as big as a dot! Inside of each mitochondrion are hundreds of small "spheres" scattered along stalks in the mitochondrion! Each sphere is about 1/1,000th size of the mitochondrion! So, each sphere would be about one-five-millionth (1/5,000,000) the size of a dot! Each of these tiny spheres is a chemical factory, with a "production line" that produces energy and food for the cell. This is such a marvel of smallness and intricate complexity that it stretches one's imagination even to try to think of it.
79. Although it may not understand
That Life & Death go hand in hand,
The mother bird, adroit & sleek,
Drops worms into an open beak.
Before necessity of jaws,
And moving to a simple cause,
Doubtless it will not be too long
Before the worm becomes the song.
80. If you're an adult of average weight,
here is what you accomplish in 24 hours:
Your heart beats 103,689 times.
Your blood travels 168,000,000 miles.
You breathe 23,040 times.
You inhale 438 cubic feet of air.
You eat 3 1/4 pounds of food.
You drink 2.9 quarts of liquids.
You lose 7/8 pound of waste.
You speak 4,800 words, including some unnecessary ones.
You move 750 muscles.
Your nails grow .000046 inch.
Your hair grows .01714 inch.
You exercise 7,000,000 brain cells.
--Feel tired?
81. "God is great in great things and very great in little things," said Henry Dyer.
A party stood on the Matterhorn admiring the scenery, the great things that came from the hands of God. Among them was a scientist who produced a microscope, caught a fly and placed it under the glass. He reminded the party that the legs of the house-fly in England were naked. Then he showed them the fly of the Swiss Mountains under the microscope, with legs thickly covered with hair, proving God's greatness in His provision for little things.
82. Found in oceans around the World, sea stars are almost indestructible. An arm accidentally lost is soon regrown. Oyster men once tried to get rid of starfish invading their oyster beds by chopping them into pieces. But they eventually learned that if a portion of the central disk was attached to the severed parts, these parts regenerated into whole new sea stars--increasing rather than decreasing their numbers!
83. God is not a copyist--the Devil is that because he can be no other: but everything God makes is original.
84. Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the streams and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
Little lamb, I'll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb;
He is meek and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!
--William Blake
85. At the foot of the Acropolis at Athens there stand a few beautiful Corinthian pillars. These are all that remain of the once famous Temple of Olympian Zeus. The Athenians regard these pillars with the utmost veneration, and everything has been done to preserve them. To their great pain and regret, however, they awoke one morning to find one of these matchless pillars prostrate upon the ground, and the visitor can still see its scattered and broken drums and examine the beauty and finish of their workmanship.
As no storm had shaken them during the night, the collapse of the pillar seemed inexplicable until it was found that a colony of ants, having found a small crevice where one of the drums of the column joined the other, had forced an entrance and had gradually eaten away the cement, so effecting at last its ruin.
86. There are some species of fish--most of them bottom dwellers--that have a most unusual development cycle, particularly as regards their eyes. The group includes halibuts, flounders, and plaices. They pass their early life swimming like any other fish, then a remarkable change occurs. They turn onto their sides and swim that way the rest of their lives; hence they are known as flat fish. The most astonishing aspect of this change is that the eye on the under side moves to the top side of the fish's head and remains there so that it becomes known as the "eyed side" while the underneath is referred to as the "blind side."
87. The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the Creator.--Louis Pasteur
88. The probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in the print shop.
89. In nature we hear the speech of God. (Ps.19:3,4)
90. The World God made was a beautiful World. The ugliness in it is man's own idea.
91. Researchers Sarif Salem and Francis D. Hold of the University of Wisconsin made a three-year study and found that one colony of ants moved fifteen tons of subsoil, building clusters of large mounds and burrowing five-and-a-half feet below the surface. The "deep ploughing" increased the nutrients, clay and organic matter of the surface soil.
92. Be encouraged by the example of the Allegheny ants, a common species in the eastern U.S., which help enrich forest areas by carrying tons of soil from below ground to the surface.
93. Darwin guessed that two hundred millions of years ago one or a few germs appeared on the planet and then, according to Darwin, they immediately went to work reproducing. Not quite according to kind, but with just enough variation to give us finally between two and three millions of species. Darwin thought we had two or three million. I am so conservative that I prefer the lowest estimate--a million species in the animal and vegetable world--but according to Darwin's guess, everything we now see came from one or a few germs of life. All the evolutionists believe this whether they call themselves Christian, theist or atheist. Our answer is that if it were true that all species came by slow development from one or a few germs, every square foot of the earth's surface would teem with evidences of change. If everything changed, we ought to find evidence of it somewhere, but because it is not true, they have not found a single thing, living or dead, in process of change. They have examined millions of specimens, from insects so small that you have to look at them with a microscope, up to mammals, but everything is perfect. They have not found one in process of change, and they have not been able to show that a single species ever came from another. Darwin said so while he lived and expressed surprise that, with two or three million species, they had not found a single one that they could trace to another; but he thought we should accept the hypothesis, even though the 'missing links had not been found'--not the missing link, but the missing links (plural) had not been found. If we have a million different species, we must have at least million connecting links, one to link each species to another, but a scientist, speaking in London not long ago, said that if evolution were true, it would not be one link between two species, but there would be a million links between two species, and yet, with a million times a million links that must have existed if evolution be true, they have not found a single link.
--W. Jennings Bryan
94. As Dr. Robert Millikan said, "Behind every watch there had to be a watchmaker, & so behind the intricate precision of this great Universe, there had to be a Divine Designer & Creator!" Even so, behind every great creation, whether of God or man, there had to be worlds of work, planning, preparation, designing, invention, discovery, exploration, organisation & cooperation, in order to produce the finished product--the thing that's seen--which does not begin to reveal the vast unseen labour & the multitudes of labourers behind it!--Dad.
95. An issue of Sunshine Magazine compares the human mind to a computer. It stated that scientists were asked to determine the size, the cooling system, and the power required to perform electronically the same functions that are automatically accomplished by a man's brain during his lifetime. They decided that if all parts were transistorized and built on a miniature scale like those used in rockets to the moon, the following would be needed:
"A machine the size of the United Nations building in New York; a cooling system with an output equal to Niagara Falls; and a power source that would produce as much electricity as is used in homes and industry in the entire state of California."
96. Scientists have estimated that throughout the earth 360,000 lightning flashes per hour occur. It is computed by General Electric officials that the average bolt has a voltage of 100 million, a current of 100 thousand amperes, and an energy of four kilowatt hours.
Thus, one flash of lightning would keep any house lit for 35 years. And a large bolt of lightning has enough energy to lift the 51,821-ton ocean liner United States six feet into the air.
Moreover, by combining nitrogen and oxygen, lightning creates 100 million tons of plant food a year, raining down far more than is produced by all the commercial fertilizer plants.
97. The fact that adult salmon return from the ocean to the very gravel bed where they were hatched in some swift-flowing northern stream in order to reproduce before death, is fairly well-known. But not everyone realizes what is involved in their doing so.
A salmon swims three to ten miles a day against the current for a total distance of hundreds or perhaps even thousands of miles to get back to his birthplace. The spectacular part of his return trip is when he encounters waterfalls that must be ascended. He has been observed swimming a sheer ten-foot waterfall in one leap. Higher falls can be conquered by a series of tall leaps from shelf to shelf for a total distance of maybe forty or fifty feet.
98. I take an egg in my hand every morning, in fact I take three eggs, & I look at every one of them before I break it & I think: "What a marvel of perfection, what a geometrically perfect form! It's not a perfect globe, it's not a mere oval, it is a most marvellous, beautiful creation! One little chicken egg! I almost hate to break it!" I look at that & I thank the Lord! I say, "Thank You Jesus for this beautiful creation!" And just think, one little humble lowly chicken out in some poor man's chicken yard does that every day, creates a marvel of creation like that!--Dad.
99. Sea herring, traveling in closely packed schools too numerous to count have a marvelous faculty for synchronizing their movements. Even when some floating obstacle compels a group to divide, with part of them swimming on one side and the rest on the other side of the obstruction, their rhythmic motion continues in absolute unison as if they were one instead of thousands. They coordinate their movements up or down, right or left, as if subject to a command control.
100. The dolphin, has special membranes analogous to man's vocal cords. It can make a variety of noises such as chirps, pops, clicks, squeaks, groans, whines, and other sounds in frequencies from 3000 to 30,000 cycles per second. Researchers say the dolphin can mimic human-created sounds such as laughter, whistles, and even word syllables in high frequency ranges. An electronic device, the sceptron, has been contrived to "memorize" sounds of the dolphins, to catalog dolphin-sounds, and record communication patterns. It is even speculated that the fish could ultimately inform man about such matters as missile cones falling into the sea, current temperatures, land formations, and so on.
101. The golden sea its mirror spreads
Beneath the golden skies,
And but a narrow strip between
Of land and shadow lies.
The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds,
Dissolved in glory float,
And midway of the radiant flood,
Hangs silently the boat.
The sea is but another sky,
The sky a sea as well,
And which is earth and which is heaven,
The eye can scarcely tell.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
102. In Botswana this bird lives. This honey bird is a creature of almost mythical behaviour. African travelers state that when one of these birds sees a human being it whistles to attract attention, & then leads the way to a tree where wild bees have hived. It sits by while its human friends chop down the tree & take their fill of honey. It then proceeds to feast on the comb that is left, especially on the young bee grubs. We find many human counterparts of this bird--who are willing to let the "other fellow" do the work & they partake of the benefits & feast on the "Honey".
103. You ask me how I know it's true
That there is a living God--
A God who rules the universe,
The sky...the sea...the sod;
A God who holds all creatures
In the hollow of His hand;
A God who put Infinity
In one tiny grain of sand;
A God who made the seasons--
Winter, Summer, Fall and Spring,
And put His flawless rhythm
Into each created thing;
A God who hangs the sun out
Slowly with the break of day,
And gently takes the stars in
And puts the night away;
A God whose mighty handiwork
Defies the skill of man,
For no architect can alter
God's Perfect Master Plan--
What better answers are there
To prove His Holy Being
Than the wonders all around us
That are ours just for the seeing,
104. Into the sunshine, full of light,
Leaping & flashing from morn till night;
Into the moonlight, whiter than snow,
Waving so flower-like when the winds blow.
Into the starlight, rushing in spray,
Happy at midnight, happy by day;
Ever in motion, blithesome & cheery,
Still climbing heavenwards, never aweary.
Glad of all weathers, still seeming best,
Upward or downward motion thy rest;
Ceaseless aspiring, ceaseless content,
Darkness or sunshine thy element;
Full of nature nothing can tame,
Changed every moment, ever the same:
Glorious fountain! Let my heart be
Fresh, changeful, constant, upward, like Thee!
--By James Russell Lowell
105. We muse on miracles who look
But lightly on a rose!
Who gives it fragrance or the glint
Of glory that it shows?
Who holds it here between the sky
And earth's rain-softened sod?
The miracle of one pale rose
Is proof enough of God!
--Edith Daley
106. "How do you know whether there be a God?" was once asked of a Bedouin; & he replied, "How do I know whether a camel or a man passed by my tent last night? By their footprints in the sand." "The heavens declare the glory of God!" (Psa.19:1)
107. I think a tree is almost as beautiful as a woman! I think the next most beautiful thing God ever made to a woman is a tree. It even looks like a woman with beautiful hair waving in the breeze. It never resists, it just yields & bends & bows & nods its head to the will of God & just smiles all day! Did you ever notice a tree is full of smiles? Every parting of the branches is a smile with the corners turned up, see? They're all smiling! A tree is nothing but smiles, no frowns, unless man or the Devil's storms sometimes bend it the other way & make it a little ugly, then it just grows right back up again towards the Lord!--Dad
108. Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
--Christina Georgina Rossetti
109. I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
--William Wordsworth
110. Modern science says, "The identical fourteen elements found in the human body are also found in ordinary soil of the earth." The Bible says, with scientific accuracy, "Man is formed of the dust of the ground! " (Gen.2:7) "Dust thou art & unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen.3:19) Said a scientific lecturer, "If it were possible for the human body to instantly lose all of its electrical values, that body would instantly fly into dust."
111. "Come little leaves," said the wind one day,
"Come over the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
Summer is gone, and the days grow cold."
Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they know.
"Cricket, good-bye, we've been friends so long;
Little brook, sing us your farewell song;
Say you are sorry to see us go--
Ah, you will miss us, right well we know.
"Dear little lambs in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
Fondly we've watched you in vale and glade;
Say, will you dream of our loving shade?"
Dancing and whirling the little leaves went;
Winter had called them, and they were content.
Soon fast asleep in their earthly beds,
The snow laid a coverlet over their heads.
--George Cooper
112. The kindliest thing God ever made
His hand of very healing laid
Upon a fevered World, is shade.
His glorious company of trees
Throw out their mantles, and on these.
The dust-stained wanderer finds ease.
Green temples, closed against the beat
Of noontime's blinding glare and heat
Open to any pilgrim's feet.
The white road blisters in the sun;
Now, half the weary journey done,
Enter and rest, oh, weary one!
And feel the dew of dawn still wet
Beneath thy feet and so forget
The burning highway's ache and fret.
This is God's hospitality,
And whoso rests beneath a tree
Hath cause to thank Him gratefully.
--T. Harrison
113. When Robert Bruce, the famous emancipator of Scotland, was fleeing from his enemies, he sought refuge in a cave. Although they were hot on his trail, when they reached his hideout a spider had built a web over the mouth of the cave. His pursuers concluded that he could not have entered without first destroying the web. Naturally they presumed that he had fled elsewhere. No wonder Bruce prayed, "O God, I thank Thee that in the tiny bowels of a spider You can save for me a shelter, & then send the spider in time to place it for my protection."
114. Did you know that when the first Handbook of American Scientists was printed back in the 20's that only about 20-some-percent of American scientists claimed to believe in any kind of God or Supreme Being or spiritual Superior Power or Creator? But about ten years ago before we left the States, the Handbook of American Scientists--all the most famous & important scientists of the U.S., listed in their various fields--76% of them said that they believed there was some kind of Superior Power or Designer or Creator or God or Providence or whatever they want to call it, higher than man, that was in control!
Now that is quite a jump in faith!--Why? Because like I quoted Dr. Steiner, who was considered the greatest authority on the human cell, after 30 years of studying the human cell he said: "I'm more & more convinced the more I study, the more I marvel & wonder at the Designer behind it all!" Sort of like what Dr. Robert A. Millikan said about the watch. So Dr. Steiner said that the more he studied the cell, the more he realised there had to be a Designer, a Creator!
The percentage of these honest, open-minded scientists who are honest & willing to confess that the more they study, the more they realise there's a Designer & Creator, Somebody behind it all, has leaped from the 20's to the 70's in about 50 years!--Three times as many!--Dad.
115. Prof. Showwalter gives us some interesting comparisons. If you measure man's strength and achievements in engineering by the standards set by the insects, man's success is overshadowed entirely in some ways.
In the Olympics it is a standard jump that clears the bar at six feet six inches. Yet the common flea is capable of jumping one hundred times as high as his own head. Were champion Olympic jumpers to do as well proportionately they would jump clear over the Washington Monument at one bound with some eighty feet to spare.
If the modern baggage man could carry loads as heavy in proportion to size as an ant, he could lift a half-ton trunk to the top of Washington Monument without apparent fatigue.
If a man could dig in a few days out of hard clay or sand, with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or six caverns twenty feet deep and four or five feet square, it would not be any more comparatively than that which the wild bee does when it digs a hole in a hard bank of earth six inches deep, six times its own size.
116. The day after the great earthquake of San Francisco, a newsboy was showing a dazed man the way through, &, as they walked, the boy philosophized thus: "It took a long time to put all this stuff up, but God tumbled it over in a minute. Say Mister, 'tain't no use for a feller to think he can lick God!" (Ezek.21:26,27)
117. Marvelous the structure and the intricacy of the mysterious operations of bees. Each bee has three pairs of legs. The bee's nose has two to three thousand tiny sense plates. The wings of the bee in flight beat 190 times a second, or 11,400 times a minute. The wax manufactured by hive of bees floats on water and is strongly resistant to heat--enduring a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit before melting. No other wax has such a high melting point.
A red clover blossom contains less than one-eighth of grain of sugar. Seven thousand grains are required to make a pound of honey. A bee, flitting here and there for sweetness, must visit 56,000 clover heads for a pound of honey; and there are about 60 flower heads to each clover head. When a bee performs that operation 60 X 56,000, or 3,360,000 times, it secures sweetness enough for only one pound of honey.
118. The atmosphere we breathe is composed of a combination of nitrogen and oxygen suited perfectly for our lungs. The distance of the earth from the sun and moon is scientifically correct for the maintenance of life, health, and happiness. The perpetuity of the rain and snow makes the earth fertile. The tides of the sea keep the shore clean and fresh. Vitamins necessary for bodily existence are provided in abundance. Laws and forces of nature stand ready to be harnessed for man's use. Nor does nature exist merely on a subsistence basis. God has filled the earth with beauty and charm. There are majestic mountains and verdant valleys. There are tall trees and lush carpets of grass. The moonlight, the stillness of the desert, the melodious thrill of songbirds all witness that God has made the earth for our pleasure. Food for man grows plentifully, and beneath the soil are abundant minerals and oils for tools and fuel. Surely this minute agreement between man's needs and his environmental provision gives evidence of a miracle--working God.
119. The year's at the spring,
The day's at the morn,
Morning's at seven,
The hillside's dew-pearled.
The lark's on the wing,
The snail's on the thorn,
God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world.
--Robert Browning
120. Few of the followers of Darwin's theory of evolution realized how he later felt about the results of his own speculations. Lady Hope tells of calling upon Darwin and finding him reading the book of Hebrews, which he described as "a royal book." Lady Hope spoke of creation and of the treatment the Genesis account of it had received at the hands of some. Darwin fairly wrung his hands as a look of agony came over his face. "I was a young man," he said, "with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time about everything. The ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them. Oh, if I could only undo it!" A few weeks later he died.
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these, 'It might have been!'"
121. Alligator, beetle, porcupine, whale,
Bobolink, panther, dragonfly, snail,
Crocodile, monkey, buffalo, hare,
Dromedary, leopard, mud turtle, bear,
Elephant, badger, pelican, ox,
Flying fish, reindeer, anaconda, fox,
Guinea pig, dolphin, antelope, goose,
Hummingbird, weasel, pickerel, moose,
Ibex, rhinoceros, owl, kangaroo,
Jackal, opossum, toad, cockatoo,
Kingfisher, peacock, anteater, bat,
Lizard, ichneumon, honeybee, rat,
Mockingbird, camel, grasshopper, mouse,
Nightingale, spider, cuttlefish, grouse,
Ocelot, pheasant, wolverine, auk,
Periwinkle, ermine, katydid, hawk,
Quail, hippopotamus, armadillo, moth,
Rattlesnake, lion, woodpecker, sloth,
Salamander, goldfish, angleworm, dog,
Tiger, flamingo, scorpion, frog,
Unicorn, ostrich, nautilus, mole,
Viper, gorilla, basilisk, sole,
Whippoorwill, beaver, centipede, fawn,
Xantho, canary, pollywog, swan,
Yellowhammer, eagle, hyena, lark,
Zebra, chameleon, butterfly, shark.
--Henry Knight
122. "Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree,
Discussing things that are said to be;
Said one to the other, 'Now listen you two,
There's a certain rumor that can't be true:
That man descended from our noble race,
The very idea is a disgrace!
"'No monkey ever deserted his wife,
Starved her babies, and ruined her life;
And you've never known a mother monk,
To leave her babies with others to bunk,
Or pass them on from one to the other,
Till they scarcely knew who is their mother.
"'And another thing you'll never see,
A monk build a fence around a coconut tree,
And let the coconuts go to waste,
Forbidding all other monks to taste;
Why, if I put a fence around a tree,
Starvation will force you to steal from me!
"'Here's another thing a monk won't do:
Go out at night and get in a stew,
Or use a gun, club or knife,
To take some other monkey's life!
Yes, man descended, the ornery cuss,
But, brother, he didn't descend from us!"
123. The noted agnostic, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, during a visit with Henry Ward Beecher, noted a beautiful globe portraying the constellations & stars of the heavens. "This is just what I've been looking for," he said after examining it, "Who made it?"
"Who made it?" repeated Beecher in simulated astonishment. "Why Colonel, nobody made it; it just happened."
124. In many parts of the world, the most feared of all living creatures is the lowly ant.
At best, ants can be a nuisance, but large-bodied ants gathered in force, living in huge nests, or traveling in armies of uncounted millions can be a terrifying sight.
On the march, the insects become very dangerous. Looking like a big unbroken cable snaking across the earth, the moving ants will eat everything that gets in their way, They overcome small animals easily, and even attack men, And the sound of their clicking jaws can be heard some distance away.
Only fire will halt these relentless hordes of insects and travelers who must sleep out in the open often build fire trenches around their camps at night to protect themselves against any surprise invasion.
The big ants do have one useful function, though. For centuries the Indians of South America have used the powerful jaws of the insect for suturing wounds. To do this, the torn skin is held tightly together and a big ant is placed on the wound, Instinctively, the insect bites, embedding its sharp mandibles in the flesh. Then the ant's body is cut off, leaving only his sharp pincers to act as a healing "stitch."
125. Did I ever tell you the story of what cured me of ever shooting birds again? I was about 12 years old, & this farmer, Fred Shultz's brother, put me out in his barn to shoot the sparrows that were eating his chicken feed. They would sit on this little tree in the middle of the chicken yard by the scores--there must have been 50 to 100 of them--& he set me down inside the barn looking through this little knothole, just a perfect place to prop my BB gun. The poor sparrows never knew what hit'm! It was just too easy & I kept dropping those poor sparrows to the ground! Well , I finally got tired of it & it kind of sickened me, because I wasn't the kind of boy that liked violence & killing! Fred Shultz's brother wasn't even a Christian, so I was kind of on the Devil's territory.
I went home & dreamed about it that night, & all I could see was that tree & those birds falling! And just like the Voice of the Lord, it came to me so strongly: "Not a sparrow falleth but your Heavenly Father knoweth it!" (Mat.10:29) And boy, was I under conviction! I think that was one of the first times I ever really heard so strongly from the Lord!--And I don't think I ever shot another bird in my whole life! I don't think I ever shot my BB gun to kill anything after that, ever!--Dad.
126. The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday,
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play,
Among the lowing of the herds,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.
The foolish fears of what might pass,
I cast them all away,
Among the clover-scented grass,
Among the new-mown hay,
Among the hushing of the corn
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born
Out in the fields with God.
127. When God had finished the stars and whirl of coloured suns,
He turned His mind from big things to fashion little ones.
Beautiful tiny things (like daisies) He made, and then
He made the comical ones, in case the minds of men
Should stiffen and become
Dull, humourless and glum
And so forgetful of their Maker be
As to take even themselves - quite seriously.
Caterpillars and cats are lively and excellent puns;
All God's jokes are good - even the practical ones!
And as for the duck, I think God must have smiled a bit,
Seeing those bright eyes blink on the day He fashioned it.
And He's probably laughing still at the sound that came out of it's bill!
--F.W. Harvey
128. Can you sit on top of a hill in spring,
And watch the birds sailing by on the wing,
And see the clouds drifting on in the sky,
And doubt there's a God who dwells on high?
And you watch the rainbow span the blue,
Or tread the grass full of morning dew,
Or sit by the seaside and hear the waves,
And doubt there's God who lovingly saves?
Can you watch the butterfly flit through the air,
And see the flowers blooming fragrant and fair,
Or watch the trees reaching ever above,
And doubt there's a God of wisdom and love?
Oh, dear ones!
As sure as the sun tints the west,
And the birds of the air go home to their nest,
As sure as the butterflies, birds, and bees
Flit and wander 'mid flowers and trees;
As sure as the rainbow spans the sky
There's a God who reigns forever on high,
Who will all of our joys and sorrows share,
And will over us watch with infinite care,
Our divine Redeemer; in that great above,
He watches, and waits with eternal love.
--Esther E. Rowe
129. Chinese jade dealers watch a buyer's eyes to judge whether he will pay a high price for a specimen. Confirming this cunning practice, psychologists have established that the pupils of a person's eyes widen when he is looking at something that pleases him.
130. Trees, which in winter looked like posts
Against a vacant sky,
Are now arrayed in loveliness.
They mutely testify
To resurrection glory. God
Whispered, "Time now to wake,"
And sleeping nature heard His voice
And felt His power to make
A world of emerald beauty from
The drab of bush and tree.
Each passing year spring seems more like
A miracle to me!
--Olive Weaver Ridenour
131. "BEHOLD, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and counted as the small dust of the balance (less than a pinch): he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity" (Isaiah 40:15,17).
A volcanic eruption is more powerful than an H-Bomb; an earthquake is one hundred thousand times more powerful than an Atom bomb; a hurricane lifts sixty million, or more, tons of water and generates more power every ten seconds than all the electric power used in the United States in a year! One flash of lightning would keep any home lit for thirty-five years. Two years ago, Hurricane Carla, three hundred and fifty miles in diameter, one of the most violent hurricanes in recorded weather history, whirled in from the Gulf of Mexico onto the coast of Texas. She had ninety times as much energy as Russia's fifty megaton bomb and pushed forty-six million tons of water before her.
132. The humble creatures of earth and air and sea show forth God's thought. Insects are ingenious. The firefly that plays hide-and-seek on a summer night shows us that insects had a flashlight before we did.
God made it so.
The ichneumon fly has a drill with which she can bore a hole four inches deep in a tree and deposit her eggs.
God made it so.
Beetles and carpenter bees have drills. The carpenter bee can drill a hole fourteen inches deep.
God made it so.
There is a certain ant that makes a tunnel through a foot of solid stone.
God made it so.
The sawfly, which worked before man had a saw, has two tiny saws, working alternately back and forth, side by side, to produce grooves in trees.
God made it so.
Spiders are real engineers, surpassing the architects of the Brooklyn bridge in many ways.
God made it so.
The oak tortrix draws the edges of a leaf together with thread until he has made a comfortable shelter for himself.
God made it so.
133. I believe with Henry W. Longfellow that if Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, & not in silence, what wonder & expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, & the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
134. Evolution is the greatest hoax ever foisted on human minds.
135. Scientists tell us that there are nearly a hundred elements in the make-up of our world. These elements have affinities and aversions, and are the playgrounds of opposing forces, yet with all their pulling and pushing there is a nicety of balance that is amazing to thinkers. There may be other elements somewhere in the universe, but another one here might upset the balance of those we have, and certainly if any one of a dozen elements that could be named were taken away, the earth would be a desert. God has just the right number, in the right proportion, and they behave in exactly the right way so that all the pulls balance all the pushes. ... Most of what man knows, he learned from some other person's experiments or mistakes, and after a fourth of his life spent in school, man fumbles with the mysteries of life and matter--sometimes with an air of profundity. God served no apprenticeships.
136. No scientific instrument is as sensitive to the light as a person's eye. And in the dark, its sensitivity increases 100,000 times; one can detect a faint glow, less than a thousandth as bright as a candle's flame.
137. The expressive power of the human eye is so great that it determines, in a manner, the expression of the whole countenance. It is almost impossible to disguise it. It is said that gamblers rely more upon the study of the eye to discover the state of their opponents' game than upon any other means. Even animals are susceptible of its power. The dog watches the eye of his master & discovers from them, before a word is spoken, whether he is to expect a caress or apprehend chastisement. It is said that the lion cannot attack a man so long as the man looks him steadily in the eyes.
138. There's a part of the sun in the apple,
There's a part of the moon in a rose;
There's a part of the flaming Pleiades
In every leaf that grows.
Out of the vast comes nearness;
For the God whose love we sing
Lends a little of His heaven
To every living thing.
--Augustus Wright Bamberger
139. I love a tree,
A brave, upstanding tree!
When I am wearied in the strife,
Beaten by storms and bruised by life,
I look up at a tree and it refreshes me.
If it can keep its head held high,
And look the storms straight in the eye,
Ready to stand, ready to die,
Then by the grace of God, can I--
At least with Heaven's help, I'll try;
I love a tree, for it refreshes me.
I love a tree.
When it seems dead,
Its leaves all shorn and bared its head,
When winter flings its cold and snow,
It stands there undismayed by woe;
It stands there waiting for the spring--
A tree is such a believing thing.
I love a tree,
For it refreshes me.
--Ralph Spaulding Cushman
140. What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like stars at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
--William Henry Davies
141. An atheist once challenged William Paley to disprove his contention that there was no Supreme Being. Very quietly Paley took out his watch, opened the case, & said: "If I were to tell you that those levers & wheels & springs made themselves & fitted themselves together & started running on their own account, wouldn't you question my intelligence? Of course, you would. But look up at the stars. Every one of them has its perfect appointed course & motion--the Earth & planets around the Sun, & the whole group pitching along at more than a million miles a day. Each star is another sun with its own group of worlds, rushing on through space like our own solar system. Yet there are no collisions, no disturbance, no confusion. All quiet, efficient, & controlled. Is it easier to believe that they just happened or that Someone made them so?"
142. Automatically, the muscles of the eye relax so that the lens is small and thick for distant viewing or they stretch the lens to bring into focus. No wonder the eye was the original model for cameras.
Moreover, the reason a person doesn't spit in his own eye is because of his astonishing reflexes. Due to God's foresight, man's eyelids automatically close when he sneezes. At the same time his soft palate opens wide to permit expulsion through the nasal passage. But it closes tightly when he goes to cough, in order to channel irritants out via the throat.
143. "But how do we know God made the World?--Why does there have to be a God at all?" To this I gave the questioner the classic illustration of Dr. Robert A. Millikan & the watch: This great nuclear physicist or scientist who believed in God said: "Just as behind this watch there had to be a watchmaker, so behind the intricate precision & timing of this great Universe there had to be a great Creator or Designer!"
Then she brought in again about Evolution something like: "Couldn't He have done it by the process of Evolution?" But I said, "Well, if God is God & if He is Creator & could make the Universe, why did He have to make it by the process of Evolution? Why couldn't He have made it in six days just like the Bible says?
"Evolution is a religion which has to be believed by faith! All these discoveries such as missing links have been proved to be either fakes or lies or guesses or theories! Evolution is really a religion of unbelief in God! That's its whole idea: To destroy faith in God. But as far as any proofs of Evolution are concerned, even Margaret Meade, the great anthropologist, although she admitted that she herself was a firm believer (note the emphasis on believer) in evolution, she said in her own introduction to her own textbook on anthropology: 'Nevertheless, we as honest scientists must confess that science has yet to discover one single iota (tiny speck) of concrete evidence to prove it!'"--Dad
144. Scientists tell us that the sound waves set in motion by our voices go upon an endless journey through space, and that, had we instruments delicate enough, and the power to take our stand upon some planet long years afterwards, we might find them again and recreate the words we spoke.
145. A strange picture appeared on English television screens in September, 1953. Many viewers reported seeing the call letters of KLEE-TV in Houston, Texas. But the biggest surprise came when British broadcasting engineers contacted KLEE in Houston & were told that the station had not been on the air since 1950. Apparently the English TV viewers had seen old pictures that had been plucked out of space. Where had those pictures been for three years? Why did it appear only in England & how did it get back from wherever it had been?
146. Never lose an opportunity to see anything beautiful. Beauty is God's handwriting.
147. In the Pacific off Vancouver Island, there is a stretch of water known as "The Zone of Silence." Because this area is acoustically dead, no sound can penetrate it. And since no bell or siren can warn ships of dangerous reefs, the ocean floor is studded with wrecks.
148. This is a piece too fair
To be the child of Chance, and not of Care.
No Atoms casually together hurl'd
Could e'er produce so beautiful a world.
--John Dryden
149. The Evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.
150. God made the country, & man made the town.
What wonder then that health & virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threaten's in the fields & groves?
Possess ye, therefore, ye, who, borne about
In chariots & sedans, know no fatigue
But that of idleness, & taste no scenes
But such as art contrives, possess ye still
Your elements; there only can ye shine;
There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light 'they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes: The thrush departs
Scared, & the offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in you mirth;
It plagues your country! Folly such as yours,
Graced with a sword & worthier of a fan,
Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall! (& did!)
--By William Cowper, British poet (1731-1800)
151. The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heav'ns a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim:
Th'unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly, to the listening Earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;
While all the stars that 'round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What tho' in solemn silence all
Move 'round the dark terrestrial ball?
What tho' no real voice nor sound
Amid the radiant orbs be found?
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing, as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine!"
--Joseph Addison, 1672-1719