Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 19
September 14, 1967
NUMBER 19, PAGE 4-5a

Editorial....

"Invisible Things Are Clearly Seen"

Indeed they are. Paul's statement to the Romans (chapter 1:20-21) has been vindicated a thousand times over as the ever increasing borders of man's knowledge shed more and more light on "the invisible things" of God. God has not left himself "without witness," as this same Paul declared to the men of Lystra. It would take a man of unusual density and lack of perception now to contend that this vast universe is all the result of blind chance, having neither intelligence nor planning behind it.

So many exacting and specific conditions are essential for life to exist on this earth that it is simply preposterous that all of them came about, and in proper sequence and relationship, as the result of unintelligent chance or happenstance. For instance, the earth rotates on its axis at approximately 1,000 miles per hour (at the equator). If it turned at one hundred miles per hour, or two hundred, or even five hundred, our days would be so long that the scorching heat of the sun would destroy all life, both animal and mineral upon the earth; and our nights so long that if perchance any life escaped the blistering heat of the sun by day it would perish in the long cold freeze of the night.

Furthermore, the surface temperature of the sun is approximately 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If it were only half this much the entire earth would be sheathed in a solid cake of ice; whereas, if it were only half as great again, the surface of the earth would be sheathed in stygian blackness as all the waters of the oceans would be evaporated in boiling steam. Exactly this same condition would prevail if our planet's orbit were only half its present distance from the sun, or were twice its distance from the sun.

If our moon were only 100,000 miles away instead of 225,000 enormous tides from the oceans would submerge all continents twice every day, so that even the highest mountains would long since have been eroded away, and the entire earth would now be under water. The slant of our earth is at an angle of 23 degrees, thus giving us our seasons. If it were not so tilted, vapors from the ocean would move north and south piling up huge continents of ice. If the crust of our earth were only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, without which animal life cannot exist. Had the oceans been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life could exist. Had the atmosphere surrounding our earth been only a little bit thinner, a great many of the meteors, now burned in space by the millions every day, would be striking all parts of the globe, setting fires everywhere, and destroying everything they hit.

It is generally true of the elements that heat will expand, and cold will contract. But the peculiar construction of the molecules that go to make up water (two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen) gives exactly the very reverse of this effect at a certain temperature. For example, water does expand when heated and turned into steam - but it also expands when cooled and turned into ice! If this were not so, the huge icebergs breaking off the glaciers and floating out into the ocean would sink rather than rise; the bottom of the oceans would long since have become a solid block of ice; the whole atmosphere of the world would gradually have become frigid and locked forever in icy death. But because of this unusual property of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, the ice-bergs float to the surface of the ocean, gradually drifting southward, and the warm sun melts the ice.

Consider the checks and balances in nature. Our entomologists are in a constant battle with the insects of the earth. Sadly they have found that extreme caution must be exercised, lest while removing one insect from an area they open up a Pandora's box of other insects which had been held in check by the one they destroyed. Why is it that the fast-breeding, rapidly multiplying insects have not come to dominate the earth? A wise Creator has provided that insects have no lungs, such as man possesses. They breathe through tubes; but as the insects grow larger, their tubes do not grow in ratio to the increasing size of their bodies. All logic would say that they should; but they don't! Hence, there never has been an insect of any great size. If this physical check (contrary to reason and logical expectancy) had not been provided, insects would long since have controlled the earth. Bees would be the size of eagles, and ants would be as big as mountain lions!

Items like this could be multiplied almost without number. Even one such thing being substantially changed would have made human life on this planet impossible. How does it happen that ALL these conditions came about at the right time, in the right place, under the right circumstances to make life possible? The atheist has no answer; he can only wonder at an implausible and fantastic "combination of fortuitous circumstances", piling one incredible "happening" on top of another, until finally life on this earth came to be. One scientist has declared the mathematical laws of probability are such that the odds against life being the result of "chance" would have to be represented by a figure whose numbers would reach to the moon and back!

Much of the information in this article is gleaned from a book "Man Does Not Stand Alone," by Crecy Morrison which was published in the 1940's. A condensation of the book appeared in the Reader's Digest of December, 1946. It is indeed true, as declared by the Psalmist so many centuries ago, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." No sincere and honest heart can fail to be convinced by the overwhelming evidence that God has given. He has "not left himself without witness."

-F. Y. T.