Creation's Cache #4

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
  Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.


  (N.B. Apologies for the rather scientific approach I have taken today! Normal service will be resumed shortly!- Matt) 


   I started out this blog series, only a few short days ago, with a list of various points and ideas I wanted to emphasise. Since then I have added scribbles and scrawls all over the page, and now my writing is barely discernible! I have just found the July/September 2008 edition of "Answers" magazine, which looked at the "Wonders of Creation", it contains some really amazing articles, which mesh in with my general theme. In this post, I wish to look at one main topic but also to throw in a few other smaller "wonderlets" (not wander-lust, as my spell checker thinks!) that the magazine describes.

   Jonathan Edwards was an 18th Century theologian. Edwards began what he called a "Types Notebook", which he planned to use as proof of God's character revealed in nature. He wrote these words:

...the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of images of divine things, as full as a language is of words.

    Lets take a look at one of those "images". (This is one of those highlighted in the "Answers" magazine.)


Atoms
  Everything on this planet is formed of atoms. Atoms are entirely hidden from the eye, and are rarely considered in day-to-day life, however they form the very building blocks of our existence. The atoms consists of a dense central nucleus, formed of neutrons (neutral) and protons (positively charged), surrounded by orbiting electrons (negatively charged). The electrons are held in place by an electromagnetic field. Groups of atoms are held together by a similar force, these groups are called molecules.
   Atoms contain huge amounts of energy, due to the electromagnetic fields. In 1945 the USA managed to "split" an atom, thus utilizing its power. The US Air Force dropped a bomb, code named "Little boy" over Hiroshima, in Japan. The blast delivered by the bomb was the equivalent of  between 13 and 15 kilotons of TNT (one kiloton would be a cube of TNT, with each surface being over 8 meters across). Modern day Nuclear weapons and Nuclear Reactors release much much more energy.
   By rearranging the three basic particles in an atom (the protons, neutrons and electrons) different substances, or elements, are seen. Each one is distinct, with unique texture, smell and other properties, and each one serves a different role. As the writer of the "Answers" article points out, everything from our morning milk, to the walls of our house, to our fingernails, is all formed from these three basic particles. Amazing or what?!
   This is creation at its minutest (as far as we know!), and here, as elsewhere, we can see the order of a designer. The Creator is not a reckless one, who cobbled a few lumps of rock and earth together to form a rough creation. No, rather all creation is ordered and organised.

   Where else can we see this order and organisation?

The Water Cycle
   Heres one that we all must know! Its a primary school favourite! The Water Cycle. Water begins in the sea, where it is evaporated and turns into water vapour. This then heads up into the sky where it joins with more vapour and forms clouds. The clouds are whisked about by the wind, and eventually they become so heavy that the vapour turns back into water. This water falls as rain over the land. Rivers and streams carry the water back to the sea, where the cycle begins again.
    This occurs every day. The whole system means that water, the earth's most precious resource, is filtered across the land, even where any sea is hundreds of miles away. The water that rains down on crops and vegetation allows them to grow, therefore providing food and other resources.
    God has established systems and cycles such as this one to provide for all of his creation. The earth is self-sustaining- something that mankind has never properly achieved. A few weeks back I visited the Natural History Museum in London. As part of an exhibit on Ecosystems, there was a display regarding a NASA project to create a totally self-sustaining pod in the Texas desert. Although lasting a long while, and providing (apparently) lorry loads of vital data, it was a failure. Man cannot make an ecosystem that can function apart from this earth. Ecospheres Associates Incorporated claim to have made "the world’s first totally enclosed ecosystem - a complete, self-contained and self-sustaining miniature world encased in glass." Curiously however, the prices page contains a column called "replacement period", presumably therefore their ecosystems, although obviously fully self-sustainable, cannot fully self-sustain themselves for over 6 months! As far as I can tell, the only creature capable of living inside an EcoSphere is a small fish- so a long way still to go! Putting that to one side, I think that both the scientists at NASA and the entrepreneurs at E.A.Inc would agree that neither of their ecosystems created themselves, rather it took outside influence to generate any form of sustainability and environment. 




    I have been trying to show how the entire creation is ordered and functions by 'laws of nature'. From the tiniest atom to the great planets themselves, all of creation is working in order to sustain itself and provide for life. Other examples would include: the seasons, bacteria (which convert many useless waste substances into things which we need. This symbiotic relationship which we share with microbes is reflective of how much we depend on others, and ultimately, upon God!), photosynthesis (the work of plant life to produce oxygen for us to breathe), gravity and the rising and setting of the sun. In his book "The Genesis Record" Prof. Henry Morris gives his scientific thoughts on the pre-flood irrigation system that watered all of creation (remember, there was no rain until the flood). His theory may or may not be correct, either way it highlights how the creator provided for a thriving and flourishing world. 
    Creation was created for life. The order, cycles and systems are all parts of a complex ecosystem that clearly was made for habitation. The Genesis account of creation in the Bible tells us about God creating people to occupy his creation:

...then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

    I realise that my first few blogs on creation have all been rather scientific and geographically based, and I apologise! I plan to delve into the much more exciting and personal aspects later on. However for now, what have we learnt about our creator?

• His creation is big! In fact, it is utterly incomprehensibly vast. It is awe-inspiring in its sheer scale. The Creator is so so so much bigger than us! He knows his whole creation! He is an amazing God! 
• He is not a reckless creator; he is not fickle. He has created an ordered universe, full of cycles and systems to maintain and sustain itself. 
• Even the minutest particles of creation contain huge amounts of energy and power- how much greater in power must the creator be to have made them? 
• Creation was made to be inhabited. The Creator made the universe to be populated (we will look further at this at a later point)