Five Wonders of Nature

It's so interesting to study the wonders of nature. This is what they should teach in the schools. That's the way it's going to be taught in the world tomorrow, about God's creation and all the wonders that are involved in it. We look around and we look at all these trees and yet there's so much design, there's so much beauty, there's so much wonder in them. And so I'd just like to bring up five of these wonderful wonders of nature.

We do have some pine trees around in this beautiful Irvine Park and there's one pine tree in particular that I'd like to focus on, which also grows in this area all the way down to Ensenada, Mexico. And it is a pine cone that is called the knob cone. And I have here a sample that's very similar to it so that you can get an idea of what this pine cone looks like. So I'll go ahead and hand it out to Ray and then you can pass it along. You got to be careful because it still has some of that resin that keeps it sealed.

Now, as you look at the pine cone, you'll notice that all of the pine cone, the shape of it, is actually based on a mathematical formula. You've heard me talk about it before, the Fibonacci spiral. And it's a mathematical formula that is used in the industry. It's also, of course, in nature. You have the beautiful nautilus shells that are spiral and they use the same formula. There's a mathematical formula because it is the because it is the optimum shape to be able to get the right size for them. These cones, they have their seeds inside of them and they open up like a spiral. Using this, we have the sunflower which I've brought before. It's also based on the Fibonacci spiral. So, how could these have evolved using a mathematical formula? Only intelligence can design with foresight such a thing. The interesting thing about this pine cone, the knop cone, is that it can last decades on a pine tree. It's not like the typical pine cone which falls after a year and you'll see them scattered around the pine trees. No, these will stick for decades and they will only release their seeds when there's a major forest fire. And so, when a forest fire comes, this pine cone which is shut so tight that no animal can open it up. Nothing can pry it except a forest fire. When it gets up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, that cone opens partially. Some of the resin melts and it opens and it releases the gas which protects the seeds from burning up. And so, after the fire has gone through, devastated the forest, you have these pine cones as the temperature lowers, becomes cooler, it fully opens and only then it releases the seeds so that they can drop where all things are burned. And you have these pine trees are the first ones that arise and start growing and provide the shade and provide the means for then other trees to grow. And so, you have this as a kind of an emergency measure that God established so that when a forest burns down completely, it doesn't just take decades and decades for it to grow. You have these pine trees that are kind of this emergency measure that God has established so that they immediately start populating and growing back the greenery of a forest.

And so, as Psalms 145 verses 1 and 5, David said, every day I will praise you and meditate on your wonderful works.

So, every day we should be studying some of these things, praising God how we think a forest fire will just destroy everything. It doesn't. It's got pine cones that are the emergency escape hatch to these forest fires to begin new trees to grow immediately afterwards. And, of course, there's a lot of fertilizer on the ground because of carbon that has burned. And so, these trees start growing and provide the basis for other trees then to grow as well.

The second wonder of nature that I want to talk to you about is something that is in our hands. It's on one of our fingers. It's the opposable thumb that we use all day long. Do you know that this opposable thumb is unique in all the creatures that there are in the world? There's no creature that has an opposable thumb like a human being has. Now, when I'm talking about that, it doesn't mean there aren't other creatures that have some type of thumbs, but our opposable thumb is the most flexible, the most useful of everything there. Some of the great apes have some types of thumbs, but they can't swivel their thumbs like we can, and there's something that no other creature in nature can do. Let's see, raise your hands for a minute and touch your pinky finger with your thumb. See? No creature can do that. It swivels this way. You can touch your middle, the bottom of your middle finger. No creature on earth can do this. See, we can swivel with our wrists. We can use it. We can play the piano because it's so flexible. Isaac Newton, the great scientist, said the following thing. He said, in the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence, just studying the marvel of the thumb.

We take it for granted, but this is why human beings can play the piano. They can paint. They can write. Just being able to write down what you're doing. No creature on earth can do that. And also, you can throw a baseball. And pitchers have mastered the pitch in baseball, where just by moving their thumb and their fingers, they have like six different throws. And that's why these poor baseball batters are trying to hit this because they've got the split finger. They've got the slider. They've got the screwball. They have the fastball. They have the curve. The knuckleball. And you know what? It just depends on how a pitcher releases the ball. That's why they keep it hidden in their gloves to the last minute. And the batters are there looking at it intently because it depends on just a little bit of movement. And the ball can go left instead of right. It can go down or up. And so, because of the marvel of our hands and the thumb, try to throw a baseball without a thumb. Or what? Yeah, or a football.

You can't give it a spin. And so, just recently, a famous biochemist, he's a British scientist, Stuart Burgus, and I'd like to go ahead and hand this out.

Stuart Burgus.

Just so everybody can study it.

He wrote the following. Why human skeletal joints are masterpieces of engineering? He has a YouTube presentation on that. And he is one of the eminent engineers. They call bio-engineers. And he says here, my interest in human joints, that he is involved in the design of advanced engineering joints for nearly 40 years. He's designed robotic hands and wrists. He designed the robotic joints on a spacecraft. Those robotic arms. He said he couldn't find a better model than the hand and the wrist and the elbow. So, this ENVASAT satellite actually used the model of the arm and the hands and the wrist.

And so, in that YouTube presentation, he shows how one of these evolutionists were trying to say that, well, all of these things evolved and we actually have too many bones in our wrists and in our ankles.

Our wrists have seven bones and our ankles have eight. Bones. And this writer, his name here is LENS. I've got it here. His book is called Human Errors. Nathan LENS. Seven bones of the ankle, sorry, and eight bones of the wrist. He says there are too many. It would be better to have a fused structure. And then this bioengineer just says that is poppycock. That does not work. He says if you had fused wrists, just one bone here, all of the structure around it, the hand and the arm would have to absorb all the pressures. Whereas if you have different bones, they can be distributed.

He says the problem is you take more strain and that this person was ignorant of biomechanics. So here in this, you can see the difference between a fused and he says, oh, I hope I never get fused ankles or fused wrists because it limits you so much. I know. I played tennis. And for years when I started playing, I never had a teacher. We just grew up hitting the ball. It took me years. And I finally had a young man that was in the church from Mexico that was kind of a semi-professional. And he showed me how to put my wrist in the right way. Now, if it was fused, there's no way I could drop my wrist and hit the ball and had the spoon-shaped shot. That's how you get the topspin. That's how the professionals do it. Once I learned how to do that, my tennis improved 70 percent. And it just changed the whole thing because I have all of these wrist bones that you can adjust them just the right way. And that's just one example.

Leonardo da Vinci, who was one of the greatest painters, studied the human anatomy to be able to properly write and also paint the human body. He said, the foot is a masterpiece of engineering.

When everything is carefully examined, each bone has an optimal structure for it. And so, these people that try to say that this all evolved, they're so desperate, they even want to deceive people, to have a fused wrist. If you ever have something in your body that's fused, some people have fused vertebrates. Some have, you know, fused fingers or something. Do you think a fused vertebra works better than a normal vertebra? No! It always limits it, as it tells us in Psalm 35 verse 10. Again, David, the great student of nature, said, "'All my bones will say, Lord, who is like you?' Who could have created something so marvelous?" The contemporary English version says, "'Every bone in my body will shout, no one is like the Lord.' I'm sure glad it was God who designed our bones and not this fellow, Nathan Lent. It would have been a catastrophe." Now, another discovery made in the last decades has to do with the 18 trillion feet of DNA that is inside each of us. 18 trillion feet.

A human cell, on the average, is less than one five hundredth of an inch. You can imagine an inch and divide it up by 500 parts, and one of those parts is the size of a human cell, too small to visibly see without a microscope. Inside those cells is the genetic code inside the nucleus. The nucleus is even smaller than the cell, and inside the cell we have this. So I'd like to pass this out. So we have, if you took all of the cells that have a nucleus and have DNA in our body, which is around 3 trillion, and if you took one cell, a human cell, and you would take all the DNA, if you were able to unspool it, if you were able to stretch it out, it'd be about my size, six feet in height. That's how long each cell would have of the genetic code. So you multiply 6 times 3 trillion, and you come up with 18 trillion feet, or 3.5 billion miles inside one human being, inside of you.

3.5 billion miles is the equivalent of 18 round trips from the Earth to the Sun. That's how long our DNA in our bodies is. You could take 18 round trips from the Earth, 93 million miles to the Sun and back.

And some people say, God doesn't care about me. Can you imagine all the effort?

What if we would have had a position where we had to create human beings, and one of the conditions is, well, you're going to have to put in them all this genetic information in their cells, and they're going to be composed of 18 trillion feet of DNA. I would say, what's the second option? I'm not going to put all that. How can I miniaturize something like this? But God did it. He cares for each one of us. He was willing to put all of that effort into us.

In Psalm 139, verse 13, Psalm 139, verse 13, David, again, who was such a keen observer, not only of everything around him, but of the human body as well. He says in verse 13, For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well.

Yes, we can say the same thing. Just like what Bill Wozner mentioned in his first message about the blessing of understanding these things. Now, people can go and study biology, and they can study all of these things, but they don't relate it to God's Word. He was the one that created all of these things. I'm going to need a little bit of water. Just a bottle.

I have the fourth great wonder to share with you. Thank you. Take a sip here. My mouth is a bit dry.

Here's the fourth great wonder. I know there's a lot of things going on. How many knew that last month they had the Nobel Prizes awarded in Sweden, and that here, Don did? See, raise your hands how many? A number. A number had it. There was one particular prize that got my attention, and it's in this Economist magazine of October 8, 2020-22. It says, the Physics Prize went to a trio of scientists whose insights into the fundamentals of quantum mechanics have set the stage for a new era of technology. This is the technology of the future.

Quantum computers, quantum networks, and secure quantum cryptography are all rooted in experiments carried out over several decades by Alan Aspect, John Closer, and Anton Zellinger. So, I want to pass the next thing around. I know this isn't something that you usually have as table talk, but I want you to understand something that's important from God's point of view, and that's called quantum entanglement. And this is what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. He tried to refute it, but these scientists showed that Einstein had been wrong, and that it is something true. So, I'm going to pass this out. You don't have to know all the details about things, but you do have to understand how it applies in the Bible, how it applies to nature, because God is the author of it. So, this is something that's part of nature that's very important. It's revolutionary. This article goes on to say, their work revolves around a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, in which pairs of particles become correlated or related with each other so that they behave as if they were single units. So, here are two particles. They're separate, and yet, when they have this relationship among them, it doesn't matter the distance. When one changes, the other one changes, and that's because of observation of it. It changes the very nature of the particle. It says here, this leads to counterintuitive effects, means things that don't look rational or logical. Changing the properties of one particle in such an entangled pair will, for example, immediately change the other, no matter how far apart the particles are. They could be right next to each other, or at opposite ends of the galaxy. In other words, they could be from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other. And when one changes instantly, the other particle changes. So, in this graphic that I'm showing, it says here, let's say that you have two entangled balls, each in its own box. In this metaphor, the balls can be either yellow or red, once observed. See, observation by humans, or humans involved in the observation using instruments or whatever. But they change colors. For now, they are in a state of superposition, or both yellow and red at the same time. So these particles can be one thing or the other until they are observed by human beings. But what if one observer decides to look at their ball from a different angle, not from the top, but from the side of the box, the balls would revert back to a state of superposition and have a 50% chance of being yellow and 50% chance of being red, until you observe the balls. And then, once you observe them, if the first one is yellow, then the other one turns to yellow as well. If it's red, the other one instantly changes. It changes its presence, and it changes its properties. The objects remain connected even over vast distances.

And the scientists think of entangled objects as really being a single object, when they're not. But they don't want to recognize the implications of it. And that's what I want to bring up.

Quantum entanglement is part of this miniature world that God designed so that free will would be involved in things. Human beings can change outcomes of the future by deciding something.

As Steve Peterman wrote in the Theological Implications of Quantum Mechanics, he says, theologically, this would mean that God created a world where there are real, open possibilities for what can occur. It's not a mechanical system that doesn't matter whether human beings exist or not. No, human beings interacting with the world change it at the quantum or the microscopic level. He says, the future is not set. So this idea that, well, human beings, you've already had your whole life determined for you. That's false.

People have choices, he goes on to say. Now, since every event is intentional and the future is open, this means choices are made. Choices mean there are live options, which further entails freedom. So this idea, well, I'm always going to be this way. I can't change life. Everything is determined. That's not true. You can change the world. Reality becomes what you choose accordingly. It's like when you choose to marry someone, basically it closes other doors. Now, you go through that door and you're going to live this life. You could have chosen someone else. You could have chosen not to be married. Those are doors that you enter. You choose what doors will eventually determine things. That's why choice is so important. And that's why God tells us in the Bible. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 30. He made the universe in such a way that we make reality happen. And all the other options close at that time. All the doors.

Notice what it says here in verse 19 of Deuteronomy 30. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you. This is talking about the world, the laws of the universe. You say they're going to witness what you choose that I have said before you. Life and death. You can have a life following God, being blessed, or you can have a life that leads to misery and death. Blessing and cursing. Blessed by God, or allowed by God for curses to fall upon the person. Therefore, choose life that both you and your descendants may live. That you may love the Lord your God. This is what life means. That you may love the Lord your God. Do you love God? Have you learned to love Him? To follow Him? To put Him first? That's a decision! That is a quantum entanglement that all of a sudden that choice takes you in the path that God is going to be with you, accompanying you through thick and thin in life. Or you can choose to go your independent way and just do things on your own. And see how luck and chance turn out. He says that you may love the Lord your God. That you may obey His voice. And that you may cling to Him. For He is your life and the length of your days. And that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. So again, there's this promise that Bill Wozner mentioned. This is in the future. It is a promise, but it's not going to be fulfilled in our physical lives. But this is what God says will be carried out as a consequence of shutting all the other doors out.

You sort of shiver and think, how many different lives did we have options when God started calling us? I know I could have been so many different persons. I could have just said no to God at 17 and continued on. I would have shut that door. I don't know if that would have been permanent or not, but it would have led me to go to the university, study medicine, go that way, focus on myself, and going rising up the ladder of success as I could have if possible.

But it would have been on my own. I would have been one more person following the God of this world and just following sin. And God in His mercy called me and strengthened me at that moment. I said, no! I'm changing the path of my life now! And I had to face my parents. I had to face my friends. I had to face everything! I said, I'm going to love God and put Him first.

I didn't know everything but all these other doors shut. And now over 45 years, or it's been now 55 years, over 53 years coming to it, in which these are the doors that we go through. Have we been blessed or have we been cursed? I can say I've been blessed far beyond what I deserve or what I can ever have imagined. And so, this is why it's important to understand how God, of all the physical things He created, the hardest things are this quantum world where He created it where free will can actually be part of the system and change things.

And who sustains all of this? In Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. In verse 16 through 18, I'm going to read it in the good new God's Word. Is the mic moving too much? My voice, is it okay? Okay. Colossians 1, 16 through 18 in the God's Word, it says, He created all things in heaven and on earth. Talking about Jesus Christ.

Visible and invisible. Whether they are kings or lords, rumors or powers, everything has been created through Him and for Him. He existed before everything and holds everything together. He holds this whole universe and all this quantum world. He's the one that sustains it all. He is also the head of the church, which is His body. He is the beginning, the first to come back to life so that He would have first place in everything.

So we are in good hands. And finally, the last of the wonders is the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope. How many have heard of the James Webb Space Telescope? Yeah, the great majority. This was just launched last year, December 25, 2021. It traveled a million miles, which is four times the distance of the moon, so that it would settle in a place where the gravitational poles of the earth and the sun are equal in that particular place where they call it the Lagrange Point Two.

It's a place where it stands still. There's no possibility of it falling because gravitational forces and the equilibrium involved keeps it in this space, in this place. It arrived in January 24 of this year, and by July 17, it was fully functional. So I'd like to pass out a picture of the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST for short.

It is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. The Hubble Telescope is only 332 miles above the earth. The James Webb Telescope is a million miles. The first picture started coming in in July-August, and they are just a work of art, the beauty that it showed. And it showed that the universe is even better ordered than the theorists imagined.

It confirms that the universe had a beginning that has started with a huge burst of light and heat, and that it is expanding outward in a very elegant way. It shows that as you go further back in time, the galaxies are more orderly than expected. They call them smoother. They thought they would not have harmonized and become so well ordered, even in those remote times.

So they're going to have to now fine-tune some of these equations they had before. And more discoveries are on the way. They will focus on four main areas. The light in the universe is going to be measured much more precisely. The assembly of galaxies in the early universe, the birth of stars, and then the planetary systems.

In Psalm 19, verse 1, David again, David again.

David was an astronomer of his day. He examined the night sky as a shepherd, but he did something that Sir Isaac Newton mentioned. He said, he who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God. If you just take it as something casual, something not to really focus on, you're never going to really have the respect and awe in God. But he who really thinks, which means openly, thoroughly, has to believe in God. That's what Isaac Newton did. That's why he was such a strong believer in God.

In Psalm 19, verse 1, David said, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Firmament has to do with the sky. Day unto day, utter speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. You can study all of these stars and galaxies, and you analyze how orderly they are. Do you know that the universe is composed of stars and galaxies? They're called filaments. It's like this cobweb that is across the entire universe, and you have these galaxy clusters all over. All of these filaments that everything is so orderly. It's like a garment. God clothed the universe with all of these galaxies and stars.

Now, as the James Webb telescope probes deeper and deeper into the past, into the most recent galaxies, they name all of these galaxies. But God says he not only knows all the galaxies, he knows all the names of the stars in the galaxy. And when you look at all of these photos of the galaxies, you see the spiral galaxies and all the different ones. And there are approximately around 200 billion galaxies in the universe. It's so much that some of the figures go up even higher. But when you look at that, you say galaxy number 1015. Wouldn't it be interesting that one day God and Jesus Christ will come up to you and say, here's your galaxy. And all the planets that are there, this is going to be your area. We're giving you God-like powers to go, to create life, to beautify all of these things, to learn and to experience. Now, that's a big job to do. And they want us to do it according to our personality.

And just like these beautiful birds that are singing in the background, now one day you're going to be able to create these. And we're going to be able to go visit your planets. Because God's government is going to expand outwardly.

Another scripture as we end, Isaiah 40 verse 12.

Isaiah 40 verse 12.

It says, about God, who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and measured heaven with a span, which is, you know, from the thumb to your pinky. He can measure the whole universe in the span of his hand.

And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.

Goes on to say here, verse 22, it is he who sits above the circle of the earth. Because at that time they knew the earth was round. And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain. As the curtain expands when you get out, the poles. So is the universe expanding, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

And then, the final scripture, as I end, Romans chapter 1 verse 18.

Romans chapter 1 verse 18. It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Yes, we're a very small flock, but that's not our fault. That's the world's fault. For not listening, for not seeking, for not opening their minds, their minds to the truth. God could call many more people, if they just had that humility and willingness to submit, and let Him guide us. How many more people could we have? So, of course, God's wrath is strong. He says, verse 19, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. How?

Through nature, for since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. And so, that's the tragedy. And we don't have too many people who want to listen to God's truths. We don't want to face God and deal with His laws and submit to them, and so they are in the state of rebellion. And we see where the world is. One of the reasons we have this Sabbath in the park, and why we continue to have it, is because we don't know when we won't be able to have a Sabbath in the park. I don't know what's going to happen next year. It's such a fragile and delicate and dangerous world we're living in, talking about atomic and nuclear type war. North Korea is threatening South Korea again, and lobbing missiles, and then you have the Ukrainian crisis that's bringing Russia and China into the four of things. I don't know when we'll have a normal world here coming up in the next months. That's why we have this, because it hasn't happened yet. But I've never had to say these things before. We thought life was going to continue. After COVID, the world has changed, and we're seeing economic duress like we've never seen before, and so many dangers. So, brethren, let's continue looking at the wonders of nature, thanking God as our creator, as our sustainer, and as our coming King.