God Creates

I’m taking a fascinating apologetics course entitled “Creation and the Bible” offered by Reasons To Believe.  The course provides a great opportunity to take a different tack to Bible study.  It’s like strapping a lawnmower engine to the back of your devotional life and yanking the starter cord.  Wow, what a blessing!

Mystic Mountain in the Carina Nebula

In the midst of a great deal of cerebral reading about Special and General Revelation, Martin Luther’s ideas on Sola Scriptura, Old-Earth Creationism, Dual Revelation, and Philosophical Reductionism (no one will speak to me at parties now—I’m sure), I started reflecting on the magnificence of the Creator and his ongoing creation. We can read the creation account in Genesis 1 & 2, and struggle  to fathom what that was like 13.7 billion years ago, but to really appreciate its magnificence, look at the science of astronomy.  Yes, God created, but importantly, he creates.

Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16): Pillars of Creation in a Star-Forming Region

These whimsical, other-worldly images are photos from the Hubble Telescope. Photos! So if you want to debate whether or not God can do any particular thing, look at the worlds he is creating right now.  It’s pretty hard to argue—God has impressive credentials.

Dave Rudy recently sent this link that demonstrates the scale of the Universe (it requires Flash). Scroll your mouse wheel to go into to the smallest theoretical building blocks of matter or back out to the outer limits of space.  As you get way out there, you’ll begin to appreciate how massive these created worlds are.  And there are billions of them in the night sky.

Psalm 19 states, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.”  The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”  These verses support the doctrine of General Revelation—that God reveals himself through his physical creation (nature), and that this revelation is universally evident.  The Bible (Scripture) is his inspired Special Revelation, where he makes clear those things which cannot be revealed by observing the natural world, such as the person and teaching of Jesus Christ and the resurrection.

As Lon Solomon would say, “So what?”  So we have two categories of revelation.  Great.  Huzzah for theologians.  But before yawning over General and Special Revelation consider this: what if all that groundbreaking scientific research can bring to bear regarding our understanding of the Universe actually supported God’s special revelation in the Scriptures?  In other words, how exciting would it be to discover that faith and science are not in conflict, but actually compliment each other?  What if some of the smartest and most gifted scientists—men and women who had distinguished themselves in fields like astrophysics and bioengineering—could use their studied observations about the physical world to corroborate what we read in the Bible?  Apologetics offers all that and more.  All it takes on our part is a little effort to hear them out.  You might be very surprised, as I am, to discover just how far these brainiacs can run with hard scientific evidence that proves what was written thousands of years ago by inspired writers.  It’s not just a few thoughts by a few scientists—it’s a landslide of evidence offered by an intellectual multitude.

If you want a real treat, get the Dual Revelation DVD—it gave me goosebumps.  These apologists have a powerful and refreshing way of looking at faith and the Bible.  You don’t have to park your brains at the door to be a Christian.  More to the point, our physical world does declare the glory of God.  But then again, someone came to that conclusion a long time ago.