Hanging in the hallway just outside of our church auditorium, I have a framed replica of the Declaration of Independence that I have possessed since childhood. I am an avid history buff, but among all of my historical books and artifacts, none captivates me quite as much as the opening words of the birth certificate of our nation. It says:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I truly enjoy seeing all of the proof, written on parchment and stone, that our nation and government from its very inception acknowledged God. The person who wishes to twist and distort the words of the First Amendment to claim that our nation and government is to be devoted to secularism, utterly antagonistic to any official mention of God, would have to burn down the Library of Congress, shred our founding documents and bulldoze thousands of monuments to even begin to eradicate the proof that they are wrong.
That phrase from the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, though, "Nature's God," is meaningful to me for another reason. It reminds me that far from being pantheists, the founders of our land viewed God as being separate from, and high above, his creation. That brings me to a second area of fascination for me; the wonder of the world God has so intricately designed.
The beluga whale is a voluntary breather. It must consciously come to the surface to breathe, yet it must also sleep. God's solution? Only half of its brain sleeps at a time, the other half brings it up for air.
One of the world's most amazing plants, the Venus flytrap, is carnivorous. It catches bugs and small creatures and eats them. But in order for it to snap something up, the bug or whatever it is must touch one or more of the trigger hairs twice in succession. That way the plant doesn't waste energy by snapping at false alarms.
The jewel squid is found in incredibly deep waters, 1,650 feet and more down in total darkness. So how does it see to eat? One eye is much larger than the other and is specially designed to see through the black waters.
The first thing God audibly spoke into being was light. It is so essential to life that he has created multiple ways for it to now be produced, such as cathodoluminescence, scintillation, electroluminescence, sonoluminescence, triboluminescence and Cherenkov radiation.
Our sun is 1.3 million times bigger than earth. Big, that. But the pistol star is 100 times bigger than our sun. But Canus Majoris is bigger still, with an estimated size some 2,100 times bigger than our sun, which is 1.3 million times bigger than Earth, making it 2,730,000,000 times bigger than Earth. "Incomprehensibly huge" does not even begin to describe it. And yet, in Genesis 1:16 we read, almost as an afterthought, "he made the stars also."
Nature's God did a very good job designing nature. Romans 1:20 says, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;" Psalm 19:1 says, " The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."
Each and every year our microscopes and telescopes get better and better. And each time they do, we find that our world is more and more complex and wonderful than we previously thought.
Nature's God indeed!
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books which are available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.