Did God Use Evolution To Create Life?
Is God only a “First Cause” who used evolution as His method
of creation? Recently, the pope in Rome gave credence to the Darwinian theory
of evolution, indicating that, so long as evolution did not leave God out of
the picture, it might be true. Such a belief is “theistic evolution,” or the
assumption that evolution really happened, but that God somehow guided
it. Did God use green slime, or brown scum, or algae, or amoeba, or viruses
and bacteria, or polka-dotted air bubbles in the sea, or cracks in rocks, or
extreme heat, or extreme cold, or a chance strike of lightning in a primordial
soup of methane and ammonia to create life on earth? As ridiculous as it may
sound, all of the above have been seriously proposed by evolutionists to
account for the creation of life. Many professing Christians have accepted
this theory, without realizing that it denies the existence of a personal
God who created the universe, the solar system, our earth, and all life
upon it, including man. To accept theistic evolution one must reject
the book of Genesis, which says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.” Many other scriptures deal with the original creation. For you to
believe God used evolution as His method of creation means rejecting Jesus
Christ, for God’s Word proves Christ is the Creator, the Elohim
who said, “Let there be light,” and who did the creating (John 1). Is
it necessary to acquiesce to evolutionists’ claims? Must theologians cave in
to anti-God evolutionists, assuming they have amassed enough evidence to
support their theory that all life came from simple, single-celled organisms?
Let’s look at just a few living examples of God’s creation to see if
evolutionists’ claims are true.
by Garner Ted Armstrong
To breathe, or not to breathe—that is
the question. Most of the time, it’s not even a question. You breathe without
being aware of it—involuntarily. While you are working, walking, reading,
eating, speaking, you manage to breathe in and out, filling the hundreds of
thousands of tiny air sacs in your twin set of fan-shaped lungs with air.
Now that you’re thinking about it, you might be interrupting your
normally relaxed, unconscious routine. You might hold your breath for a
moment, take a deeper than normal breath, or exhale with greater force than
normal.
But if you do decide to hold your breath, you cannot do so, in most
cases, for more than about forty seconds to one minute (which is a long time
for most people, except divers, distance runners, and other athletes in very
good condition) or you will faint. Cut off the flow of oxygen to your brain
and body for only a very few minutes, and you will be dead.
As you breathe, your wonderfully designed lungs extract the oxygen and
deliver it to the little red blood cells lined up in the thin, tender walls of
the air sacs. They accept the oxygen, and reject the carbon dioxide. You
exhale the carbon dioxide, as do all air-breathing creatures. The carbon
dioxide is needed by plants to survive. Plants in turn create more oxygen.
Neither can live without the other, just as flowering plants, including fruit
orchards and many kinds of comestibles which provide food for man, cannot live
without bees and other insects to pollinate them.
Without oxygen, or “life-giving air,” you and I could not remain
alive but for a minute or so. The same is true of animals. Our bloodstream
must carry oxygen to every part of our bodies. Your red blood cells,
like little dinner plates, busily reenter the blood stream, carrying their
cargo of oxygen to your brain, to your feet and hands. They travel rapidly
through tiny blood vessels, called capillaries, to every part of your body,
including even the lungs, which are constantly inflating with new supplies of
oxygen.
When did you first breathe? Moments after you were born. Prior to that
time, you received oxygen through the umbilical cord, from your mother’s
lungs, and through her blood stream. But your lungs were fully formed, waiting
for that moment when you would first inflate them, and they would begin
carrying oxygen to your body for the first time. Where did you get your lungs?
Naturally, you got them from your parents, whose two lives produced your
one life. The genetic pattern that was present in your father’s spermatozoon
and your mother’s fertile egg determined everything you were to become. Since
the creation of Adam and Eve, there has never been a time when this was not
so.
Which came first, by the way, male or female?
It requires two human lives, male and female, to produce a child. The
two sexes could not have “evolved” apart; there had to be the capability of
reproducing after their own kind from the very first time a human
baby was born.
Which came first, your red blood cells, your white blood cells, your
blood vessels, or your capillaries? Which came first, your lungs, or the
oxygen they take in and distribute to your blood? Who made oxygen? Growing
plants and diatoms in the sea manufacture it. But they cannot do so without
utilizing carbon dioxide. What is carbon? Where did it come from?
Carbon is an essential part of matter. But what is matter?
Matter is energy, arranged in a fantastically intricate way.
Air-breathing Fish
There are many species of air-breathing fish. One of the strangest of
all is the African lungfish, which is capable of forming a cocoon of mud, then
lying inert in estivation for months or even years at a time, surrounded by
hard, dry mud, awaiting the next rainy season! The lungfish is only one form
of life that presents absolutely insurmountable difficulties for the theory of
evolution.
African lungfish are a delicacy in parts of Africa. Native hunters use
sticks to tap on the hard, sunbaked bottom of dried ponds. When they encounter
a hollow sound, they begin digging around it until they extract a rounded lump
of dried mud, which appears almost like a geode. They then chip away the
layers of mud, until they expose the fish within. There it is! A breathing
fish, equipped with lungs which secreted mucous to protect it, wriggling ever
deeper into the mud perhaps months, or even years previously. It is alive, yet
torpid from its period of estivation. The natives then cook and eat the fish.
A strange way to “fish,” isn’t it? Tapping on the sunbaked mud of a
dried pond would not occur to most people.
Fish With Lungs—But How?
Why don’t we have gills, instead of lungs?
Actually, the study of any one of the functions of your own body is a
“breathtaking” study into the marvels of God’s creation, and a “breath of cold
air” on the theory of evolution. There are no “half-lungs,” or partially
formed lungs which are useless. Breathing creatures either breathe, or they
die.
Did you know there are air-breathing fish? Actually, all
fish “breathe” air, but the vast majority do so through a system of gills,
which act like filters, extracting oxygen from the water through which they
swim. Sometimes, when eutrophication of freshwater occurs, and the growth of
algae and plants proliferates, extracting more and more oxygen from the water,
or if man thoughtlessly pollutes a river or pond so the fish are deprived of
oxygen, fish literally suffocate while swimming about. They roll over, rise to
the surface, and die. They are seen frantically working their gills, as if
gasping for breath.
Not so with the lungfish. He swims to the surface, gulps a big breath of
air just like a dolphin or a garfish, and swims beneath the surface again.
How did the lungfish come to be?
Evolutionists claim something like this happened: Somewhere, back there
millions and millions of years ago, probably in the middle Devonian period
(the “age of fishes”), ponds and lakes dried up, and the fish began to die.
But not all of them died. They simply reasoned that they had to develop
stronger pectoral fins, turn them into rudimentary “legs,” and walk
overland to the next pond, even if it were miles away, then slither back
into the water so they could survive. Meanwhile, of course, they figured out
they had to
develop lungs, because there wasn’t any water coursing over
their gills. Sound logical, or preposterous?
First, before you read an evolutionist’s explanation, be cautioned: Try
not to think too hard. Try not to ask too many questions, like: Just how long
could a breathing creature survive when its breathing apparatus quits
functioning? How would such a creature develop a sense of direction? How does
a creature gradually develops lungs so it can breathe? How does a
creature survive sunburn, drying, insect attacks, dust, thornbushes, rocks,
and miles of sunbaked travel, when only moments before it was a fish
with fins and gills, no legs, and no lungs?
You and I know that if we didn’t have lungs right now, we
wouldn’t have time to “gradually” develop a set, because in just over a
minute, while we were sitting there with a strange “I want to grow a new set
of lungs” look on our faces, we would die.
Here, incredibly, is what the evolutionist said: “Lungfishes belong to
the ancient [sic] order of the dipnoans—fishes with both gills and lungs. They
date back...to the middle of the Devonian, when ponds and streams began to dry
up and many fishes died.
“The lungfishes were not only able to breathe air, but to travel from
mud puddle to mud puddle on paddle-like fins. Eventually they acquired
the ability to lie dormant in the mud, where they waited for the seasonal
rain” (The Fishes, F.D. Ommanney and the editors of Life, p. 77,
emphasis mine).
Ponds and streams began to dry up? Where? All over the world? In Africa?
South America? But surely, the Orange, Niger, Congo, the Nile, and the Zambezi
didn’t dry up—they run powerfully yet today, and teem with fish.
Did the Orinoco, the Rio Plata, and the Amazon “dry up” when, during the
“Devonian” age (which never really existed) the dominant form of life on earth
was supposedly fish?
Did the oceans dry up? Most fish are contained in the seas of the world,
not in ponds and streams.
The evolutionist said “many fishes died.” But obviously not all
of them died, for they are surviving in the countless billions today, just as
they did then. The reason he said many fishes died is to make the point that
it was somehow necessary for the lungfish to fully develop its lungs,
change its pectoral fins into leg-like appendages, and start off overland to
find water. But why didn’t all fish do this?
If all the ponds and rivers dried up, why didn’t all fish
gradually develop lungs, and why are there any fish with gills left anywhere?
If fish with gills could not survive when this massive “dry-up”
occurred, then why are the vast majority of fish equipped with gills?
He said they “eventually” acquired the ability to lie dormant in
the mud. But before they acquired this ability, what did they do? They
didn’t have the ability to lie dormant in the mud, so, in desperate search for
life-giving water to cool their parched skin and flow over their gills, they
thrashed about—rolling, lurching, lunging, flipping, wallowing—trying to find
relief for their dry, cracking, burning skin; trying desperately to find some
oxygen-rich, cool water to flow over their bodies.
So, before they “eventually acquired” this ability, they died.
So there really aren’t any lungfishes today—for it is obvious they
could not have survived for more than minutes; at the most, perhaps a
half-hour. But there are lungfishes today, so there must be some other
explanation. Here is a “possible” (not really) explanation a guide at a
Florida bass fishing resort once told me: Seems a fisherman was out in the St.
Johns River, and caught a very large bass. He didn’t have a live well in the
boat, but he had a small piece of cord. He was miles away from the dock, and
wanted to fish for several more hours, so he decided to put the bass in the
boat while he was motoring from place to place, then, tying the cord through
its lip, lower it into the water now and then so it could breathe through its
gills and wet its body.
He began lengthening the period of time he kept the bass out of the
water so the fish would get used to it. Finally, after giving the bass his
last drink, he kept the fish in the boat for an hour as he motored back to the
dock.
He had to walk up a narrow, slippery plank to the dock from his boat. He
picked up the bass from the boat, and was proudly holding it up to display to
the gaping fishermen on the dock when it slipped out of his hand, fell into
the river, and drowned.
This story, the typical “shaggy dog” (or, in this case, “dry fish”)
story, was told for the entertainment of fishermen. But our evolutionists who
tell us stories like that of the lungfish are serious. They expect us
to believe what they say and write.
Evolutionists are fond of telling us that the thousands of intricately
developed, perfectly formed creatures on our earth gradually evolved their
means of food-getting, nest-building, reproducing, and surviving over vast aeons of time. But how much time is required for a lungfish to
develop lungs?
And, since there are thousands of species of fish in their teeming
billions in all the oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, what was the
impetus for the development of lungs in the first place?
Every year, small ponds here and there around the world dry up, and all
the fish in them die. But when they are filled again, as most usually are,
fish reappear eventually, because eggs are carried inadvertently on the feet
of wading birds. When flooding occurs, fish are washed up here and there, and
distributed over large areas. Never would it have been “necessary” for
fish—any fish, anywhere—to “develop lungs” in order to survive! For, if all
the fish in any given pond died, there would be countless millions of
fish in other ponds and lakes who did not!
Lungfish, as we read, belong to an order of fish that have both gills
and lungs. But why? If they needed lungs to survive long dry periods,
why not “gradually” (which is impossible) develop lungs, and discard
the gills?
If they were surviving as fish with gills, were their
gills effective? Obviously they were, for without the flow of water
over the gills, they could not have extracted the oxygen they required to stay
alive. So why not keep the gills, and forget about developing lungs?
Billions of fish, in thousands of varieties, from great depths in the seas to
the smallest, shallowest little ponds, have gills. Guppies and great yellowfin
tuna have gills. They do not have a poorly developed half-gill, or a poorly
developed half-lung.
There are no such halfway gills or lungs. The gills that exist,
whether in millions of fish, or the gills possessed by a lungfish, function
perfectly.
There simply are no imperfect, half-efficient lungs or gills today. That
some species possess both is strong proof they were intended to survive
in areas of extreme drought, and rainy seasons, where both lungs and
gills would be needed.
No Intermediate Species
One of the fatal flaws in the evolutionary theory is the fact that
there are no “intermediate” species. There are no fossils whatsoever which
show a partially formed, half-effective, gradually developing wing, or beak,
or claw, or foot, or eye, or lung, or leg.
Whether trilobites or sabre-toothed tigers, worms or woolly mammoths,
the fossil record shows us only perfectly formed creatures, perfectly
functional; capable of reproducing after their own kind; capable of
food-getting, of migrating from place to place when necessary; of either
predation or proliferation so as to offset predation; of camouflage and
evasion—creatures which leave us wondering in awe at their incredible design.
Now, think. If it were true that each species of insect, fish,
bird, or mammal alive today developed gradually, over vast aeons of
time, then how many “intermediate species” were there? The answer is
countless thousands—millions! Each of these “intermediate” species would
have characteristics that would appear absolutely astounding to us
today.
The fossil record would be replete with an incredible number of
weird-looking, partially developed creatures. In fact, if the theory of
evolution were true, there would be no way evolutionists could determine
which species among all the fossils was the “finished” species, and which
was the intermediate, for the differences would be too subtle to detect.
But there are no intermediate species. Each fossil form is
complete, distinct from the others, separate.
As an example, remember that evolutionists believe the closest living
relatives of birds are crocodiles. Evolution teaches that fish
developed legs and lungs, came ashore from primeval oceans, climbed trees,
began leaping and flapping their legs and shoulders, until eventually they
learned to fly. They point to “flying” squirrels (which don’t fly, but
glide by spreading out a layer of skin between their legs) in an
attempt to illustrate an intermediate species.
There are “flying” fish in the seas. I have seen them many, many times,
spreading large pectoral fins and, using their tails to vigorously keep them
aloft, skim over the waves for incredible distances to escape from predators.
But they are gliding, not flying, and they are still fish, with
fins and scales; obtaining oxygen through their gills.
Evolutionists are fond of using Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird that had
teeth, as an example of a so-called “intermediate species.” They say that
ungainly amphibians, like alligators, happened to lurch into sharp rocks now
and then. This caused damage to their plates or scales. “Loosely hanging
scales,” they say, gradually developed into wings. Does an
abrasion on your elbow gradually develop into another arm? Do
injuries cause new appendages to grow? Nonsense!
No, any slow-moving, ponderous, cold-blooded creature like a huge
monitor lizard or a crocodile which damaged his “scales” (crocodiles don’t
have scales) or his skin would simply have damaged scales or skin for a
time. He would not grow wings!
Are Hebrew babies born circumcised? Hebrew males have been undergoing
circumcision for thousands of years now, and not one is born
circumcised! Acquired characteristics, such as an accident that might
cause the loss of a limb, are not inherited.
A man who lost a hand in a logging accident does not engender one-handed
children.
But IF (an impossible assumption!) an ungainly cayman could have
“gradually” acquired something akin to wings, resulting from encounters with
rocks, there would be a thousand times the number of fossils in the
fossil record of the intermediate species—partial wings, loosely
hanging scales, and the like—than of the fully “developed” creatures we see
preserved as fossils. But there are no intermediate species found in
the rocks.
Evolutionists claim some of the amphibians, who were “gradually”
evolving into “four-footed quadrupeds,” and exchanging their scales for fur,
decided to return to the sea, and evolve into the toothed whales and dolphins.
Four-footed, furry mammals have their noses on the ends of their snouts.
One thinks of possums, coons, dogs, cats, or even mice in this regard, as well
as horses, cows, and humans.
Now, envision a dolphin in your mind. Where is his “nose”? In
the back of his head, so he can arch his back, come to the surface, bury
his toothed beak in the water so he is not blind, and evade the charge of a
hungry shark while he is breathing, then open his blowhole for a moment, expel
the hot air laden with carbon dioxide, and quickly inhale a deep breath.
Whales and dolphins are equipped with a blowhole so they can breathe
while their eyes are still beneath the surface.
Can you envision “part dolphins,” who were once land mammals? How did
they “decide” to return to the sea, and become a full-fledged (I mean, a
“full-skinned”) dolphin?
Evolutionists imagine that the ancient furry, four-footed quadrupeds who
for some reason grew weary with the land began “fishing” in shallow waters.
Little by little, they foraged deeper and deeper. Why? Well, they had
to do so, to survive! Why? Well, because their food source was
growing scarce on the land! How strange, when there are so many thousands of
mammals surviving, eating, breeding, living their lives on the land, without
any need whatsoever to venture into the sea.
But evolutionists imagine they “gradually” lost their hair, changed
their feet, claws, or hoofs into flippers, “gradually” moved their nostrils
from the front of their snouts to the top, then up between their eyes, then to
their foreheads, then up through the fur line, or between the horns or antlers
(if they had any), to the back of their necks! Once they did this (and there
are no fossil species with any such transitional features), they became
dolphins and whales, instead of “furry, four-footed quadrupeds,”
according to evolution.
What these ancient, non-existent creatures should have done is
become otters, and just leave it at that.
Evolutionists love to use their imaginations. One is reminded of a
little six-year-old, whose imagination creates fictitious characters and
fabulous scenes, acting out in his mind Gulliver, or Jack the giant-killer.
IF any such gradual alteration of the entire physical structure of
animals took place—which it didn’t—there would be thousands of times
more intermediate fossils found in the rocks than the so-called fully
developed ones.
Why? For one thing, the intermediate forms, since they were only part
this and part that—having partially developed blowholes, partially developed
fins, partially developed tails, and the like—they would be nowhere nearly
so well equipped to survive as the fully developed species. Therefore,
they would be more likely to perish and more likely to be found in the fossil
record.
But they are not there. They are missing—simply not available.
Each species found in the fossil record is a fully developed, perfectly
adapted, incredibly complex creature which once lived on the earth, and which
died, and was buried by massive deposits of mud and sand before it
could decay or be eaten by carrion-eaters or insects.
Flattened sharks, still in swimming positions, as well as millions of
other creatures, including shellfish and many species of fish, prove they were
buried suddenly, in great catastrophes.
But now, let’s go back—far, far back in time—and try to imagine the very
first attempt by a lungfish without lungs to survive when his
pond dried up.
“Gaspy,” the Very First Lungfish
Imagine we are looking at a pond which has been drying up. The
process is quite slow, so the fish, turtles, frogs, and insect larvae which
inhabit the pond are unaware of the fact that the water is slowly retreating
from the banks.
As we know, if such were to occur today (and it often does in times of
drought), all that happens is that the fish are trapped; as the available
oxygen is depleted, they die. Some struggle in the thickening mud for a time,
and then they die. Turtles begin to slowly make their way overland, seeking
another pond. Frogs try to hop to another pond before they dehydrate.
But fish? How long does it take for a pond to dry out? If it completely
dries out, that particular stock of fish dies. But if it is only
partially drying out, with a lower water level, how do the fish swimming
about in a shallower pond determine they had better begin developing lungs,
instead of continuing to happily swim about in their somewhat smaller pond?
Does our evolutionist imagine that the seasons were suspended for
millions of years? Does he imagine fish had such a lifespan? Does he imagine
that a fish, having experienced a few weeks or a few months of a lower water
level, somehow “decides” she had better pass on to the eggs she is about to
lay an innate desire to begin to develop lungs?
But when the rainy season came again, and the pond was filled to the
brim and overflowing, why would not the fish continue to be fish, with
gills, and survive just as they were, with no need to develop
lungs?
And until there was a need for lungs, there was no hidden, primal
urge within the fish to “develop” them. But the “need” didn’t occur until an
hour or so before the fish died from lack of oxygen. So there aren’t
any lungfish today, because there was not enough time for the first
ignorant gill-equipped, non-lungfish, who had no idea his pond would dry
completely out, to develop them.
But there are lungfish. Where did they come from?
Let’s apply the imaginary scenario of the evolutionist to “Gaspy,” our
very first lungfish. After all, there had to be a first one. Evolution
would never admit that countless thousands of them were created by God
at the same time. Therefore, there had to be a very first “almost”
lungfish—a strange-looking, partial lungfish with “primitive” lungs which
just barely were able to process the air and supply oxygen to the fish’s
body.
So here he is—Gaspy—looking around in dismay at all his dead cousins and
friends, who have been thrashing about in the muddy bottom of a pond that has
been slowly drying out.
“Not me!” he says to himself. “I’m not going to suffocate in all this
mud—I’ll just drag myself to another pond, and grow legs instead of fins, and
lungs instead of gills, and I’ll survive!”
He knows, however, that he cannot breathe. He is strangling on mud! His
gills are covered with mud, and he hasn’t had time to develop any lungs yet!
So he dies. But he can’t die—because he needs to “evolve.”
He knows his skin will soon dry out, without being laved with water. He
knows he must get to another pond—a larger, deeper one—or he will die. (Please
don’t ask how he “knows” all this, for such concepts are embarrassing to
evolutionists).
Now, in our imaginations, let’s lower ourselves to one inch above the
thick, gooey, slimy puddle of mud in the bottom of a drying pond. What do we
see? We see a forbidding dry, cracked shore where water used to be. We see
dried tree roots and sticks. We see rocks and dust and sand. We see exactly
what Gaspy sees—from the height of one inch. From down there, he can’t
possibly see over the rim of the drying pond, so he has no idea what is out
there, except perhaps the tops of some trees. But he has never seen trees
before, so they mean nothing to him.
He has got to move! Got to escape this puddle of thick mud, which
has already become so thick his gills have long since quit providing him with
oxygen, so he is already dead! But he can’t be dead, because he needs to
evolve!
An idea strikes him! Why not simply wriggle about, allow more and more
mud to form about his slimy body, ooze some more slime out from his skin until
he forms a ball-shaped cocoon, and estivate right where he is? That
way, he won’t have to shed his fins for leg-like appendages. He won’t have to
somehow navigate to the nearest deeper pond. He won’t have to drag
himself along the ground for miles and miles, making about a foot an hour,
breaking his fins, scouring his belly on dirt and rocks, struggling over
twigs, branches, and sand. He won’t have to be so horribly sunburnt as to dry
out completely. Besides, he couldn’t have gotten even so much as one breath
with his non-existent lungs, and his gills became caked with mud and dirt, so
they couldn’t provide him any oxygen, and so he died.
But he can’t have died, evolution says.
Did he begin to secrete a sticky, mucous substance so he would not dry
out, and die? But how, if he didn’t know he should? Did he begin to
store up body fat, so he could estivate, and live off his own fat for
up to several years? Did he begin to practice slowing down his heartbeat, and
taking only one breath or two in an hour, getting ready to slow down his
metabolism?
But how? What was the impetus, the inner compulsion to compel him
to do all this, when he had no idea he would have to do it to survive?
No, better to “walk” across land, and find a deeper pond, where he can
continue to use his gills, like any self-respecting fish. This would be
utterly impossible, for he would be dead in only moments, but he starts out,
then dies in less than two minutes from lack of oxygen. His gills have become
clogged with dirt and sand, and he gasps his last. But he can’t do that,
because he must somehow evolve, so his offspring can still be alive
today.
How far to go? He doesn’t have a clue, for he has not yet developed the
sense of smell, so he can tell where the next water is to be found. He
doesn’t have any knowledge of the stars when they appear at night, for he has
never seen them before. He doesn’t know north from south, or east from west,
or higher terrain from lower, for he has been a fish all his life,
swimming about in a pond.
But he lurches, twitches, lunges—by now his pectoral fins are worn
completely off. Most of his scales have been scraped from his body; his tail
is hanging in rags, and of course his mud-caked, sand-filled, dirt-clogged
gills have long since ceased to function, so he is dead. He doesn’t exist. But
he can’t be dead, because he needs to evolve.
Gasping for breath with his non-existent lungs, he rests for a moment,
having no idea which way to go. Suddenly, he feels a stinging sensation! Fire
ants! He has lurched his way onto a fire ant mound, and hundreds of them are
stinging him, beginning to eat holes in his bedraggled skin! He tries to lurch
away, but the ants can run faster than he can lurch! So he is eaten by ants,
and he doesn’t exist.
But he must exist, because he has to develop those lungs! Just
then, a shadow passes across him. Then another. He looks up from his dirty,
sandy track in the baked earth. It is a buzzard! No, several of them.
They land, hop toward him; their obscene, naked heads glistening in the hot
sun; their cruel beaks and little, yellow eyes poised over his drying,
dirt-caked body.
They begin to feed. So he dies. He doesn’t survive.
Time and time again, he doesn’t survive. Wild dogs attack him. A possum
finds him. Foxes eat him. A stork gobbles him up. A pack of hyenas discover
him, and quickly eat him.
But, notwithstanding all these many times he dies, and does not survive,
he survives! (Anything is possible in “evolutionary” thought, just like in a
Disney cartoon).
Miles from nowhere, he finally gives up in frustration. He sadly turns
back toward the muddy bog he left. Days later—having been eaten several times,
and having died several times from dehydration—he arrives back at the pond he
left, which is now only bone dry, cracked, hard earth. Too late! There is now
not enough mud for him to create a slimy mud ball, and estivate inside
it until the next rainy season!
So he dies.
Exit Gaspy—poor critter. He had no idea he needed to develop lungs in
only minutes! He had not the faintest idea about how to estivate, and
didn’t have the lungs to keep him alive even if he had. He didn’t know north
from south; had no idea where to find the nearest water. His gills were
clogged, and so, just like all the other fish in the pond, he died. He should
have evolved into a snake, and slithered under a rock to find shade. He should
have caused his ragged, broken, useless pectoral fins to evolve into wings,
and sprout feathers, and take off into the air and perch in the shady
branches of a tree. He should have evolved into a lizard!
Think about all this for a moment. The very first time a lungfish
existed, he had to exist in perfect form; with a set of very functional
lungs. The very first time a pond dried out that contained lungfish,
they had to know how to form a muddy ball, lie quiescent within it, and
estivate until the next rainy season!
What is estivation?
It means to lie dormant, or torpid, during the summer. It is the
opposite of hibernation, which is to lie dormant during the winter, as
do bears.
The Lungfish—Perfectly Equipped
When the dry seasons come to the great river valleys and basins of
some of the largest rivers in Africa, such as the Congo Basin or the Zambezi
River Valley, lungfishes begin to sense that their ponds are drying out.
Repeatedly, as the water level lowers, they squirm into the thickening
mud, keeping their heads just above so they can breathe. They begin by
plunging headfirst into the ooze, then surfacing. Then they slowly wriggle,
squirming ever downward as the surface sinks. By repeatedly thrusting his
mouth to the surface for air and squirming with his body, he forms a rounded
cavity in the gradually hardening mud. He keeps it barely open at the top so
he can breathe.
He secretes a slimy mucous which completely covers his body. As the ball
of mud dries, he wraps his tail around his head to protect his eyes.
The only opening remaining is a small, funnel-like hole to permit him to
breathe.
How did the lungfish “evolve” the mucous-like secretion?
Obviously, the very first time in all history that a lungfish “decided”
to encase himself in a rock-hard cocoon of mud, he had to secrete the
slimy mucous in order to protect his body. There would be no second chance.
How did he “evolve” the instinct to wrap his slimy tail around his head, to
protect his eyes from drying out? The very first time any lungfish
“decided” to form a mud cocoon, he had to protect his eyes! Though he
breathes, he is not like most other air-breathing mammals. If he is
uncovered from his parchment-like dried ball of mud, and his body exposed to
the air, he will die in only a few hours. How does he survive? During his long
wait—incredibly, for up to seven long years—he lives off his own body
fat.
He slows his metabolism down to almost nothing; his heartbeat is only
three beats each minute, and he requires a breath only once in several hours!
Today, depending on the location and the weather (dry or rainy season),
there are countless numbers of lungfish, waiting for water to begin trickling
down their tiny breathing hole.
When the rains come, and the cracked, dry lake bed begins to fill, the
lungfish feels the water on his head. He begins to squirm immediately. As the
water softens the blowhole, he is able to wriggle more and more out of his
cocoon. Since he is now much smaller than he was at the beginning of
his estivation (as long ago as seven years in some cases), he is soon
able to wriggle free from his self-imprisonment, and begin swimming in the
pond.
Soon, other life forms appear. Insect larvae, waiting in the hard mud,
and frog eggs and fish eggs, carried on the muddy feet of wading birds, begin
to hatch. Flying insects lay their eggs, and hatch more larvae. Happily, the
lungfish begins to feed on his regular diet of tiny plant and insect life
again!
And all this evolved?
Any thinking person should know better!
You can apply logic to any creature that exists—from mosquitos to
great blue whales, from hummingbirds to honeybees. Study what they do and how
they survive. Ask yourself about the very first creature, far, far back
in time. How did they gradually evolve their incredible, complex
methods of survival?
Let’s look at another fascinating example.
Stingless Bees
Science tells us there are more than one million different
species of life forms—mammals, birds, fish, and insects. This is not counting
bacteria and viruses. About 80 percent of all life on our planet is
represented by insects.
Of these, about one-third are beetles, and about one-seventh are ants,
bees, and wasps. A study into any one of these myriad creatures is a
fascinating journey into the awesome intricacies of creation; a glimpse into
the powerful, vast, and limitless intelligence of our Creator God.
Consider the stingless black bees of the Amazonian rain forest: They
usually nest in the hollow of a tree. Like “mud dauber” wasps, they find a
source of mud, busily gather it up, and fly to their nesting site.
Finally, they completely seal the nest, or hive, until there is only a
cylindrical tube, several inches long, as an entry. How did they first “know”
they should do this? What happened to the very first stingless black bee
colony that did not fashion a narrow, protective entry to their hive?
Obviously, they were found by a bear, or sloth, and eaten, so none
survived. But they did survive. So the very first stingless black bee colony
had to survive in the same fashion they have always survived!
While black bees are stingless, they do have powerful mandibles with
which they can bite.
Their “flight tunnel” is the only way they can get into or out of the
nest once it is completed. They insure it is only one bee’s width, so
only one bee can enter at a time.
Now comes the amazing part! They secrete a sticky substance, a viscous,
tar-like goo, that will trap any insect seeking to crawl into their
flight tunnel.
How do the bees themselves avoid being entrapped in their own tar? They
fly out of the tunnel, and they fly into it. It is several inches in length,
one bee in width. Yet, they fly straight into the tunnel, making a perfect
bull’s-eye every time! All this was millennia before anyone thought
about landing an airplane on a rolling carrier deck!
Their eyes (actually, hundreds of little eyes contained in two orbs,
giving them incredible vision) instantly adjust from the light of the forest
to the stygian blackness of the inside of the tunnel and the nest!
In order to leave the nest, they must become airborne before they enter
the exit, or they would become stuck fast. As additional protection, just
where the tube widens, they amass a large contingent of “guard bees” to repel
any invader with powerful bites.
The stingless black bee has an incredible method of survival and
reproduction. If they did not have such a survival method, then they would be
fair game for a huge variety of crawling and flying insects; for snakes and
rodents, birds and bears, possums and sloths. Therefore, they had to do what
they do the very first time they did it!
The Honeybee and Pollination
One of the absolute proofs of God, and a major disproof of
evolution, is symbiosis. There are hundreds of examples of symbiosis,
or the ability of two completely different forms of life to aid each other,
and which cannot survive apart from each other. Mankind, and the vegetables,
fruits, nuts, meats, and fish he must eat, as well as the bacteria that live
with him, is an example of incredible symbiosis.
Look up an article on the honeybee sometime in an encyclopedia, or
obtain a book about bees from your local library or bookstore. It is a
fascinating, mind-boggling study into one of the most orderly, regimented,
systematic, successful societies in the entire ecosystem.
Every grade school child learns about bees and pollination in biology
class. Every person grows up having observed bees flying from flower to
flower, swarming over peach trees in bloom, carrying yellow dabs of pollen on
each hairy leg.
The flowering plants could not exist without them. The bees could not
exist without the plants. Which came first, the bees or the plants? This is
not a simple question, or a nettlesome, impudent question for evolutionists,
to be brushed aside like the proverbial “Which came first, the chicken or the
egg?” question of the days of the Scope’s trial. It is a profound
difficulty for evolution, for, unless bees and flowering plants co-existed
from the first, neither could survive!
The average bee hive contains about 50,000 to 80,000 bees, of which most
are workers. The workers are a specific size, and are female, but cannot
reproduce. Bees play such an important part in human life, and their efforts
help man produce so many products that there are many idiomatic expressions in
our language about bees.
“She is the queen bee” is a despective term for an arrogant woman. “He
made a beeline for home” means he hurried home in a straight line, because
bees, while they will wander in all directions in search of pollen and nectar,
always make a straight flight back to their hive. “Honey” is probably the most
common term of endearment used by spouses, and by parents for children. God
described the Promised Land to Israel as a land “flowing with milk and honey.”
Consider the life of a bee, and ask yourself some vitally important
questions about how evolution could be possible!
A bee egg is the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It is
laid by the queen, who is solely responsible for reproducing the hive. None of
the female workers are fertile; none lay eggs. But the egg is not laid on the
ground, on a branch, or on a leaf. It is carefully deposited in the center of
a perfectly formed sextagonal cell, made of beeswax.
The wax is produced by young workers. How? By special glands in their
abdomens! How did such evolve? Which came first, the egg or the larva, or the
grub or the adult? Why are there drones, workers, and one queen? No queen
could exist without workers to collect the nectar. No worker could exist
without the queen to lay eggs. No eggs could ever be produced without the
drone to mate with the queen.
Did a tiny egg “evolve” by itself? Did a queen bee “evolve” in
Africa, and a drone “evolve” in Massachusetts? If so, how did they ever find
one another?
Was the first step in the “evolution” of a bee the worker? But if
so, since they are infertile females, and cannot reproduce, how did they
reproduce? These are not idle questions, merely intended to anger
evolutionists. These are valid questions, which can be asked of any
form of life in creation!
What is beeswax, and how is it formed?
The wax is secreted from pores outside the bee’s body, forming tiny
flakes. The worker moves the flakes from its body to its jaws, and chews the
substance until it is formed into beeswax. It then carefully builds a perfect, sextagonal cell. Each cell is only about 1/80th of an inch thick, and is
joined to other cells, each exactly the same size. Who has not seen a
honeycomb, and marveled at the intricate construction of it?
Each tiny cell is so constructed that it has a slight downward tilt
toward the central retaining wall so the honey will not ooze out. Scientists
have studied the honeybee for many centuries, and still do not know much of
what there is to know about these marvelous little creatures.
How did they know to produce wax? How did they know to develop the
glands that secrete it? How did they know to scrape it from their sides, chew
it into strips, clip it with their jaws, and lay it carefully into such an
intricate shape?
“As we may easily discover by measurement, the hexagon has the smallest
circumference and therefore requires the least amount of building material.
“Moreover, hexagons are much better fitted to receive the roundish
larvae which are reared in these little chambers than cells with triangular or
square cross-sections could ever be.
“The bees, with their hexagonal cells, have in fact discovered [sic] the
best and most economical plan conceivable. How they arrive at this, none of
our learned men has so far been able to discover. Their writings and
discussions on the subject are many, but they have not yet solved the riddle”
(The Dancing Bees, Karl von Frisch, p. 8).
Beeswax is remarkably heat resistant! It will not melt down until
subjected to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest melting point of any known
kind of wax!
One may purchase a jar of honey which contains a slab of honeycomb. When
you study a honeycomb, you are not looking at the end result of blind
chance—randomness through millions of years called evolution. No, you are
looking at intricate design, and the awesome creative mind of God
Almighty!
Once the egg is laid by the queen in the cell, it takes only about
three days for a tiny larva, like a little worm, to crawl out of the egg.
Which came first, the wax, the cell, the queen, the egg, or the larva? How did
the queen become fertile? Where did the drones come from? How and why are the
majority of the more than 50,000 bees in an average colony workers, who
spend their lives gathering pollen, secreting wax, producing honey and royal
jelly, and making perfectly shaped wax cells?
How does the larva survive? One thing is sure, if a tiny larva
“evolved” from some other form of life, it didn’t survive without being
deposited in a waxen cell, and being fed by worker bees!
Go to your local health food store, and ask for a jar of royal jelly, if
you wish to sample larva food! Royal jelly is a special kind of honey that is
extremely rich in vitamins and proteins. It is secreted from glands in the
heads of the young workers. In only days, as the tiny larva grows into a grub
shape, or pupa, the workers begin feeding the grub a mixture of pollen and
honey that scientists call “beebread.” Five days after the larva hatches from
the egg, the workers seal the pupa by depositing a thin layer of wax over the
cell. In twenty-one days, the grub-like pupa has miraculously become
transformed into an adult bee. The bee then bites its way out of the cell, and
immediately begins to work!
How does it know what to do? Miraculously, it knows to begin gathering
nectar and pollen. It knows to join other workers in vigorously fanning its
wings to cool the hive in hot weather. It knows, instinctively, that it should
pay attention when a fellow worker comes back to the hive and begins to dance.
Dance? Yes, dance! Many years ago, as a project for science
classes, our instructors obtained a swarm of bees in a beehive and placed it
in a window, so it could be observed from inside the classroom.
The teachers demonstrated to the students how bees landed on the hive,
then danced by facing in a certain direction and “buzzing,” or fanning
their wings in various bursts of energy.
Facing first this way and then that, they would fan their wings
vigorously for a certain span of time. They were teaching their fellow workers
how far to fly in which direction relative to the sun! The
workers then flew away from the hive, directly to the nectar that their scout
had found.
Now, let your imagination run wild—just like evolutionists do. Imagine
the very first time a worker bee wandered about, looking for nectar.
But she had not yet “evolved” the ability to return to the hive! She
buzzed about, finding flowering fruit trees (which did not exist, since bees
had not yet evolved as a colony yet, and there were no swarms of bees to
pollinate the trees and flowers), and drank the nectar.
But, since she had not yet “evolved” the hairs on her legs, the grains
of pollen did not collect on her, but kept falling off. Therefore, she
couldn’t pollinate the trees and plants, for she could not carry the pollen
from place to place. All the flowering plants died. So did the worker bee.
After all, how could she survive, since she was never an egg, or a larva, or a
pupa? And how could she survive if she did not know she was supposed to
produce honey to eat? And how could she survive if she could not find
the way back to her non-existent hive?
But, overcoming all these impossibilities, she decided to return to the
hive. But she had not yet evolved the ability to make a hive, for her
body had not yet “felt the need” to secrete wax from non-existent pores, and
she had no idea she had to chew the wax, and then carefully form it into
perfectly shaped sextagonal cells, all joined together. After all, there was
no hive to which she could return!
Besides, she had not yet “evolved” solar navigation. She had not yet
evolved a keen memory, detailing every meter of distance between each flower,
and memorizing its relationship to the sun and the hive.
So, our very first honeybee could not fly on a direct “beeline” to her
hive, for she didn’t know how. Furthermore, if she could find her non-existent
hive, there would be no queen awaiting her (and what difference would it make,
since workers are infertile females, anyway?), no larvae to feed, and no
additional wax cells to make to house eggs, since there were no drones to mate
with the queen, and therefore no eggs!
Therefore, our very first honeybee, without a hive, without solar
navigation, without wax-making ability, without pollen-gathering ability,
simply ran out of nectar, fell to the ground, and died of exhaustion. Just
before she died, she was heard by an evolving beetle to say, “To bee, or not
to bee—that is the question!”
You see, the hive is a perfect community of symbiotic relationship—each
drone, worker, and queen working together in intricate ways for the
good of all. None can survive alone. In a perfect cycle of life, all must
survive together, doing exactly what they do.
Scientists do not know how the workers “decide” it is time to produce
more queens! Perhaps the queen grows old, or decides to fly away with a swarm
of drones to form another hive.
For some mysterious reason, the workers begin to feed only royal
jelly to several larvae, but not before building special cells for
these special larvae to grow in. These cells are not among the myriad other
six-walled cells, but resemble a half a peanut, hanging from the hive.
The ruling queen lays eggs in these larger, different cells. The eggs
hatch into tiny larvae. The workers then feed them some “special substance”
(science does not know how they decide to do this, what this substance is, or
how they produce it) in the royal jelly which determines they will become
queens.
The young adult queen has changed from larva to pupa, to a winged,
hairy-bodied adult in only sixteen days after the egg was hatched.
But, alas! If two queens hatch at the same time, they fight to
the death! One finally succeeds in stinging the other one to death. If there
are more than two, the same scenario takes place. All are eliminated except
one! Then, gaining strength from eating honey, the surviving queen takes her
first flight.
How does she know how to fly? She has no memory of flight. She has no
“knowledge” of what those wings are that gradually dried out, and are now
lying alongside her back. But, suddenly, she flies. Eager drones immediately
follow her. Higher and higher she flies as the drones swarm about her,
jousting with each other for her favors. She may mate with one, or several,
during this mating flight.
She then returns to the hive, where workers have been rapidly creating
dozens of new, perfectly shaped, sextagonal cells of wax they have chewed from
the flakes on the bodies. The queen now has two functions in life: laying eggs
and eating. She may lay as many as 2,000 eggs in one day! She continues doing
this for up to five years, having laid up to one million eggs in
her lifetime!
How did the workers first “decide” to select particular eggs to become
queens? How did they “evolve” the “special substance” they feed a tiny,
struggling, worm-like larva? What causes the queens to fight until only one
remains? What if, back in the dim reaches of ancient time, the very first two
queens to ever hatch stung each other to death simultaneously? That would mean
the very first hive died, so no honeybees exist!
No, the entire colony had to exist just as it does today from the
very first time there ever was a beehive, with workers, drones, and a
queen—all fulfilling their perfectly-designed roles.
Honey—Food for Bees and Man
Most school children know all about honey. At least, they know its
taste. There are many kinds of honey; many colors, depending on the kind of
flowering plants from which the bees collect nectar. Many thousands of
families keep their own bees and collect their own honey. For many children, a
favorite sandwich is peanut butter and honey. Many major food manufacturers
bottle and sell honey. They do not “make” honey—it is made by the bees. All
they do is filter out most of the impurities and place the honey in a
container, and sell it.
How do the bees make it?
When a bee drinks in nectar from a flower, it is at once collecting and
redistributing grains of pollen so that the plant is pollinated. The
nectar is taken in through the bee’s mouth, into its “honey stomach.” Once the
honey stomach is filled with nectar, the worker knows it is time to return to
the hive.
Though she followed the “dance” of the scout she watched turning this
way and that, buzzing its wings in bursts of energy to indicate how far and in
what direction she should go to find the blossoms, the worker has programmed
into her tiny brain the exact location of the hive relative to the sun.
With her honey stomach full (as opposed to her own stomach which digests
her food), she turns directly toward the hive. She “knows” that the
shortest distance between two points is a straight line. She makes a
“beeline” home.
While the nectar is in the bee’s honey stomach, her stomach is secreting
“certain chemicals” (science does not know how this is done) into the nectar.
Once the bee is back in the hive, she either gives the nectar to another
hungry bee by drawing it back out of the stomach through her mouth, or, most
of the time, deposits it in one of the wax cells. Once a cell is full of
nectar, the bees carefully seal it with wax.
The stored nectar is changed into honey by the chemicals from the
bee’s honey stomach. Any water in the nectar evaporates, for the razor thin
walls of the wax cells are porous and the nectar is changed into honey.
Each tiny drop of nectar is incredibly small. The bee’s little honey
stomach, when it is empty, is about the size of a pinhead. It would require
about sixty full honey stomachs to fill a thimble with nectar. Amazingly, each
bee must visit and drink nectar from over one thousand single florets,
such as those in crimson clover, just to fill its honey stomach once!
Bees do not encounter pollen by accident. They need pollen in
order to survive. The workers who feed the queen larvae do so from
predigesting pollen into royal jelly. As the bees collect pollen, they
mold it into a solid mass on their hind legs. One may observe a honeybee
busily going from flower to flower with little yellow pods on the outside of
its hind legs. This is pollen the bee has gathered. As she gathers it, her
body becomes completely dusted with grains of pollen, which are then
transferred to the waiting stigmata of other flowers. The stigma is the part
of the pistil of a flower which receives pollen grains.
Since the average honeybee hive needs somewhere between sixty and one
hundred pounds of pollen each year for food, they must collect almost four
million loads of pollen!
Again, remember that pollen, predigested by the workers, who
secrete some kind of chemical from glands in their heads, determines whether
the egg will become another worker or a queen!
How is this done? Scientists have no idea. How can a tiny
brain of an insect contain such remarkable intelligence, such mind-boggling
instinct?
A beehive is like one living organism living in perfect symbiotic
relationship with flowers, flowering trees and plants, clover, and other
flowering grasses. Neither can survive without the other!
Yet, the beehive is, in itself, an incredibly complex symbiotic
organism, with a queen, drones, workers, eggs, larvae, and pupae all present
in their various perfectly developed stages.
Which came first? For either to “evolve” separately is utterly
impossible. For either to survive separately is impossible.
Anyone who believes in evolution believes in pure myth—the
fanciful, imaginary guesswork of those who reject the Eternal Creator God.
“Theistic” evolution is merely an attempt to accept evolution as the
“method” a “God” of some kind used to create all the myriad forms of life on
earth. As a theory, it is equally untenable with Darwinian evolution.
The next time you taste honey, take a moment to reflect on the wonders
of God’s creation, on how the little honeybee serves mankind, and on how life
could not exist without the bees.
The word honey is mentioned almost fifty times in the
Bible. Its first mention is found in Genesis 43, in the moving account of
elderly Jacob, sending his sons again into Egypt, to determine if Joseph is
alive: “And their father Israel [Jacob] said unto them, If it must be so now,
do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down
this man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh,
nuts, and almonds: Take double money in your hand; and the money that was
brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand...”
(Genesis 43:11,12).
Honey has been known from ancient times. Honeybees have been found
preserved in amber, which scientists know to be thousands of years old. They
are exactly like the honeybees of today. They are not part bees, and
part something else, but perfectly formed bees.
Fourteen times, the Promised Land is described as a “land that floweth
with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8,17; 13:5, etc.), and is a special feature of
the account of Samson, the slain lion, and the riddle (Judges 14).
Samson had slain a lion, and, when he returned, the drying bones of the
carcass contained a swarm of bees that had built a hive, and were
manufacturing honey.
Samson “turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there
was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And he took thereof
in his hand and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave
them, and they did not eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey
out of the carcass of the lion” (Judges 14:8,9).
Beekeepers know that bees will not sting unless they are pressed, or
hurt. A sudden movement will cause them to sting, whereas a slow, gentle
movement will not. Many beekeepers do not wear gloves. No doubt, Samson knew
how to gently pick up a piece of honeycomb without being stung.
Jesus ate honey.
After Jesus Christ was resurrected, He appeared a number of times to His
disciples. On one occasion, He appeared to them in Jerusalem: “And He said
unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts [doubts] arise in your
hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see:
for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when He had thus
spoken, He shewed them His hands and feet. [The livid scars were plainly
visible; evidence of his torture and death on the stake.] And while they yet
believed not for joy, and wondered, He said unto them, Have ye here any meat?
And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. And He took
it, and did eat before them” (Luke 24:37-43).
Here was the very Creator of all life, proving that He was
alive—that He had been resurrected from the dead—by the familiar,
everyday act of eating with them!
In this case, eating honey directly from a honeycomb. Considering
He was the resurrected Savior of the world, and was also the Creator of
honeybees, do you think this act of eating fish and honey was not an
inspiring, moving act? Any evolutionist who had been present (there were no
evolutionists then, so far as we know) would no doubt have dropped to his
knees and said, with Thomas, “My Lord, and my God!”
What Honeybees Do For Us
The beekeeping and honey-selling industry is very large in the United
States, Canada, and Australia, as well as in many other countries.
More than five and a half million hives are tended by beekeepers, and
close to a half-million pounds of honey are sold each year.
Beeswax is used in making candles, chewing gum, cement, adhesives,
liniments, cosmetics, polishes, transparent paper, electrical insulators, and
lubricants, among other things. In a very real sense, bees and man live
in symbiotic relationship. Bees pollinate the flowering plants and fruit
trees, and produce wax and honey, all of which is vital for man’s life on this
earth—his comforts, pleasures, and his survival.
Today, however, this priceless little part of God’s creation is
threatened! Recent articles have revealed that a tiny mite is attacking many
hives in the United States, and destroying the bees. To large orchard growers,
and farmers growing food crops, beekeepers and their hives are very much in
demand.
It would be a true catastrophe if the bees were to disappear. Is
the threat to the honeybee another of the curses God said He would
bring upon His people who forget Him and His laws?
Every detail of the life of a honeybee is worth study, for it is
absolutely awesome. Just how awesome is illustrated by this admission
from science: “Men have studied the honeybee for hundreds of years. But we
still do not know how the worker bees know what to do or when to do it. We do
not know how the workers decide when to build more honeycomb, how they know
when the developing bees need more food, or how they decide to start queen
cells in which to raise new queen bees” (The World Book Encyclopedia,
vol. II, pp. 154,155).
It would require enough pages to fill a book to discuss all the
phenomenal facts available about bees. Such books have been written by
scientists, and are available through book stores and in public libraries.
Look up “apiary,” or “apiarist.”
How bees mate, how they swarm, how they manufacture honey, how they
reproduce, how the colony is organized—every detail about bees is truly
astounding, and well worth your time to study.
As you do, give thanks to God Almighty, your Creator, who gives you
every breath of air your breathe; who thought out, designed, and produced all
life! Studying into His fabulous creation—pondering it, thinking about it,
meditating upon it—is a way to worship God!
How utterly barren is the life of an evolutionist, who does not
know the true God!
How to Come to Know God
Such studies are not merely an “argument” against evolution. They are
much, much more. God says the way to truly come to know the truth about
our invisible Creator, who dwells in the spiritual dimension, is by
studying into the things He has made!
Just as an artist is known by his paintings, or an architect by his
buildings, so our Creator is known by His marvelous handiwork.
Paul wrote, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold back [margin] the truth of
God in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest
[evident] to them; for God hath shewn it unto them. For the invisible
things of Him from the creation of the world [by looking at the
material creation] are CLEARLY seen, being understood by the things which
are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse” (Romans 1:18-20).
The power of God, the mind of God, and God’s love toward His creation
are clearly seen by looking deeply into what He has made! Your
own mind and your physical body is a part of God’s creation. Every insect,
every bird, fish, and animal, is a part of God’s creation.
The awesome universe declares His glory, as does our sun, our
moon, the progression of the seasons, and the daily rotation of the earth.
Gravitation, the mysterious, gentle power which holds our universe and
solar system together, and which holds you firmly on the earth, and determines
the limits of the seas, is a manifestation of the power and majesty of God.
Lungfish, bees, all mammals, and all plants are a fabulous part of the
wondrous works of God, and they display His power.
It is not necessary to cave in to evolutionists, believing in
theistic evolution. Such a concept makes God out to be a vague, distant,
“First Cause,” a God who once put together all the forces and energies which
govern the universe, then left His creation alone, so that a chance
strike of lightning in a primordial swamp might have produced life!
Such a belief rejects divine revelation. It rejects the Bible out
of hand, and therefore rejects Christ, for “beginning at Moses
[including Genesis!] and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the
scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).
God’s Word is true. God is the Creator of the universe! And who
was the member of the divine sovereign Godhead who did the creating?
“In the beginning was the Word [Greek: logos, meaning spokesman], and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God:...All things were made by
Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made:...And the Word was
made flesh and dwelt [Greek: tabernacled] among us, (and we beheld His
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth” (John 1:1-14).
Your Savior was the member of the divine family who, together with His
Father, thought out, planned, and brought into being lungfish and honeybees.
He is your Creator and mine, as well!
As David declared, “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth:
and the heavens are the work of thy hands” (Psalm 102:25). He cried out, “O
Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all:
the earth is full of thy riches!” (Psalm 104:24).
The next time you see a tiny honeybee buzzing from flower to flower,
then making a “beeline” for his hive, remember to praise God for His mighty
works!
-End-
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for anything, so prove all things for yourself from the pages of your own Bible.
The Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association
P.O. Box 747
Flint, TX 75762
Phone: (903) 561-7070 • Fax: (903) 561-4141
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