Articles
The Messages of Nature
On a recent trip out west Melanie and I saw some incredible sights, from the majestic Rocky Mountains to the rugged Tetons of Wyoming; from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to Yellowstone’s Old Faithful; from herds of bison to a solitary grazing moose. These wonders of nature testified of the handiwork of God. Why? What is it about mountain vistas, shimmering golden aspens, bejeweled volcanic fumaroles and teeming wildlife that pull our minds toward God? Couldn’t all these things happen by natural forces?
It is a bedrock truth of Scripture that this planet and the universe beyond were created by the uncreated, eternal God, and the fact of their existence is intended to communicate His reality and creative power in a rudimentary way (cf. Ps 19:1-6; Is 45:18-19; Rom 1:18-20).
Before telescopes revealed the vast extent of the universe, God expected man to be awed by his observation of the heavens and think in His direction. Though middle-easterners had never seen the California redwoods or the Grand Canyon, God provided natural evidence of His existence in their own neighborhood. Creation, which bears marks of design and purpose, is Evidences 101 to all men, in all places, at all times.
But to those who have pondered creation through the lens of Scripture, the natural world has both aesthetic and rational appeal. What God has made is beautiful, and behind that beauty lies an amazing cosmos of such interconnected precision that only the most ardent atheist could say, “What a wonderful world was created by mindless, random forces!
