Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180007A
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00:31 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:34 I'm Tim Standish, and I'm a scientist. 00:37 But like most scientists and perhaps surprisingly, 00:41 in some people's minds, I love beautiful things. 00:46 Amen. Who doesn't? 00:49 You know, I'm Shelley Quinn, 00:50 we just want to thank you so much for joining us 00:54 I believe you will really enjoy this particular presentation. 00:58 We are talking, in this series, 01:01 about how God's attributes are revealed 01:07 in the invisible things that He created, 01:09 even His power and His Godhead. 01:12 And today, we've got a special presentation. 01:14 There we go. 01:16 And in fact, we're gonna talk about visible things today. 01:19 His attributes, 01:20 you can see them in the creation. 01:22 One of the things that I love about the Bible 01:26 is the encouragement that it gives us to look for beauty 01:31 in the creation. 01:32 Amen. 01:34 And probably one of the best known 01:36 and most encouraging text about that was written by Solomon. 01:40 In Ecclesiastes 3:11, he wrote, "He," this is God, 01:44 "has made everything beautiful in its time. 01:48 Also He has put eternity in their hearts, 01:51 except that no one can find out the work 01:54 that God does from beginning to end." 01:57 Amen. 01:59 That last bits used to confuse me quite a bit. 02:02 What He mean we can't figure it out? 02:04 No, this is wonderful news. 02:07 The more you look, the more you discover. 02:11 And God, who is infinite, 02:14 apparently has created 02:17 something that is going to be infinitely interesting to us. 02:22 We're not going to get to heaven 02:23 and after a billion years thinking, 02:24 "Oh, I've got that all worked out." 02:26 There is nothing new to do. 02:29 I wish that it was all over us. I think now I'm bored. 02:32 Not at all, it simply gets more and more wonderful. 02:38 As does He, you know, 02:39 the more I get to know about God, 02:41 the more you realize how little you know about God. 02:44 And His character is so multifaceted 02:47 as His creation is. 02:49 He's an incredible... 02:51 I mean, He is the lover of our souls, 02:54 but it's incredible to even consider the wonder if at all. 02:59 Yes. 03:01 And to me, it's not humiliating, 03:02 it's encouraging 03:04 that we will never quite have it all figured out. 03:05 There's always more, more wonderful things. 03:10 So I want to actually start out by looking at a work of art. 03:13 Okay. A beautiful work of art. 03:16 This is Moses, and I chose him because, 03:20 well, he's the one who wrote Genesis, 03:24 he's the one who wrote those immortal words, 03:29 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 03:34 This is obviously a work of art. 03:36 The real Moses... Michelangelo? 03:38 Michelangelo, right. 03:41 And when you look at this, 03:44 it's not really Moses, obviously Michelangelo never, 03:48 didn't have Moses there to sort of model his sculpture off. 03:52 This is the artist conception 03:56 of what Moses might have looked like. 03:59 Now I have a question. Yeah. 04:01 Here he has hair like mine or what is on top of his head? 04:07 You know, that is something that has been a mystery to me. 04:10 Can you see those things? Yes, they look like horns. 04:14 And I wondered and wondered and wondered for years about that, 04:18 I asked many artists that I knew, 04:20 "What's going on with those horns on Moses head?" 04:23 I didn't think anyone knows. 04:25 But I have heard a theory 04:28 that makes a reasonable amount of sense. 04:30 And the theory is this that when Moses came down 04:36 after getting the Ten Commandments 04:38 and being with God, 04:40 his face shone and the people couldn't look at him. 04:44 In the Latin translation of the Bible, 04:49 apparently that was mistranslated in some way, 04:52 the beams of light came out as horns of light. 04:57 And so this actually tells us something about Michelangelo. 05:01 He was probably looking at the LatinVulgate, 05:04 we call it the Bible in Latin. 05:07 And he read that, 05:08 and he was trying to be true to Scripture. 05:11 And that's why we have the horns on Moses' head. 05:14 So there we have an illustration 05:15 of how a work of art tells you something, 05:18 gives you some sort of insight into the artist, 05:22 whoever that artist might be. 05:25 Now I want you to consider this wonderful view 05:28 that we read about 05:29 that the Bible gives us of nature and everything, 05:34 God has made everything beautiful. 05:36 And I want you to compare it 05:37 with this very solemn statement really, 05:40 sobering statement that Charles Darwin made 05:43 in his autobiography. 05:44 This is what he was writing when he was an old man, 05:46 and he said, "Formerly pictures gave me considerable, 05:49 and music very great delight. 05:52 But now for many years 05:54 I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. 05:58 I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, 06:00 and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. 06:03 I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. 06:07 I retain some for fine scenery, 06:09 but it does not cause me the exquisite delight 06:12 which it formerly did." 06:13 Wow! 06:15 How telling is that? 06:16 What happened to this man? 06:18 Hell, hell. 06:20 Awful to think that a person could go from loving music, 06:24 loving art, loving nature, the beauty, 06:28 the wonder that is out there, how can that be lost? 06:31 But don't you think that your mindset, 06:34 your perspective on things if you have a negative mindset, 06:38 and you're always looking for what's wrong, 06:41 suddenly everything becomes still. 06:43 Exactly, exactly. 06:45 And that is the horror, 06:47 really one of the most terrible things 06:49 about the view of life 06:51 that Darwin has passed down to people. 06:55 It takes away the beauty. 06:57 He wrote this in a letter, he said, 06:58 "What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, 07:02 wasteful, blundering low, 07:04 and horribly cruel works of nature!" 07:07 Darwin obsessed about these things. 07:11 And, of course, as Christians, 07:13 we don't deny that nature is broken. 07:18 And, of course, the Bible gives us 07:20 an explanation for what's going on. 07:22 It also gives us hope that this... 07:25 But notice in this, 07:28 there was a premise in what Darwin is saying 07:30 and that premise is, "Hey, this seems wrong to me." 07:36 And yet, within his theory, it's the way it should be. 07:42 Everything should be in a state of struggle 07:44 and things shouldn't be perfect, 07:46 they should be broken, and the things... 07:49 The more broken things should be eliminated 07:51 by natural selection. 07:52 How could he just depose those two statements though? 07:54 It's like so contradictory. Exactly. 07:56 It's like a logical tension 07:59 that you find in much of what Darwin writes 08:01 because we know the cruel things we see in nature, 08:06 the broken things, there's something wrong there, 08:09 there's something wrong. 08:11 We know that in the core of our soul... 08:14 And ironically, Darwin was saying, 08:17 "That's what made us what we are today." 08:20 Wow! 08:21 But what it took from him, what it sapped from him. 08:26 I want us to look at a few natural things. 08:28 Yeah, just sometimes it's okay to just step back and say, 08:33 "What is there? What's this?" 08:35 So this is a butterfly. 08:37 You'll notice that I like taking pictures of butterflies 08:40 and things. 08:41 I mean, everywhere you look, you know, 08:44 if you had this biblical view, everywhere you look, 08:46 there's something beautiful and wonderful 08:49 and in unexpected places... 08:51 This is the eye of a butterfly. 08:55 This is what's called a scanning electron micrograph. 08:58 So it's not in color, 08:59 but I love the geometry that's in there. 09:01 Look at that, each of those is a little facet of its eye. 09:04 What a... I'm not kidding. 09:06 I thought that it was a honeycomb at first. 09:07 Yes. 09:08 Well, that hexagonal shape shows up 09:10 in multiple places in nature. 09:13 But it's just kind of beautiful and interesting and... 09:17 Oh, this shocked me. 09:19 You know, different butterflies, 09:21 lay different kinds of eggs, 09:23 and they have different patterns on the surface. 09:26 I would never have noticed this, 09:28 but I happened to be working on a film, 09:31 and we wanted some pictures of butterfly eggs. 09:34 So we got some butterfly eggs 09:35 and put them under the electron microscope 09:38 and each one is different. 09:40 Each one is just fascinating. 09:44 But it's not just the eggs, it's not just the tiny things 09:46 when you zoom back 09:47 and you look at a bunch of butterflies together, 09:49 these are monarch butterflies, 09:50 and this particular 09:54 group of monarch butterflies actually meets 09:56 during the winter on the coast of California. 10:00 And that's where they spend the winter. 10:02 They're smart, there're some humans do that as well. 10:04 You know, I didn't realize 10:06 how many butterflies we had in the area 10:07 until we planted three butterfly bushes 10:11 of their back deck 10:12 and now we have butterflies everywhere. 10:15 They love those bushes. 10:16 The diversity, the beauty of them... 10:18 So much... 10:20 But it's not just the animals, it's everything in nature. 10:24 Why is it that every sunset is a masterpiece? 10:28 Anytime you can see a sunset. It's just wonderful. 10:33 And why did God have to make it so beautiful? 10:38 Why did He give us senses to appreciate this and minds 10:44 that will praise Him? As a result... 10:46 Or, you know, sometimes... 10:47 He could have made everything monochrome. 10:50 He gave us vision with color... 10:53 Just the abundance of everything. 10:55 Sometimes I go hiking up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 10:59 And again, everywhere you look, there is this beauty, 11:02 you could spend all day just looking at one scene up there 11:07 and never get bored with it. 11:09 It's tremendous. 11:11 And if you go out to the universe, 11:13 it's fabulous out there. 11:15 This is just one galaxy. 11:16 And there are billions of these things out there. 11:19 And every one of them is different. 11:21 I would love to had Charles Darwin meet you. 11:27 You know, the sad reality is 11:30 once you embrace this philosophy, 11:32 you're in trouble. 11:34 The beauty is gone. 11:35 The idea of evolution without a God. 11:37 The beauty is gone. It's gone. 11:41 It's all about utility and does it work? 11:44 And I don't think it works so therefore it's bad. 11:47 And in reality, the more we look 11:49 the more beautiful and wonderful it is. 11:52 Oh, I love these bird-of-paradise flowers, 11:54 but we could have done endless flowers 11:56 and you look inside some flowers 11:58 and you find things like this bee, 12:00 and you might have picked up that I like bees. 12:03 It's all wonderful. It's all just fabulous. 12:08 And these little birds, these little birds that fascinate me. 12:12 Big birds are wonderful as well. 12:14 But the little birds we don't notice 12:15 and they all look like just little brown things 12:17 and we don't stop to really look at them 12:20 and just the sparkle in its eye and wow, wow. 12:25 This one here. 12:26 Oh, you know, doesn't it look like 12:28 it's singing God's praises? 12:30 Yes, yes. Singing there. 12:32 Jesus encouraged us to look at nature 12:36 and see the beauty that says, He said, 12:38 "Why do you worry about clothing? 12:40 Consider the lilies of the field, 12:42 how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, 12:45 yet I say to you that even Solomon 12:47 in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 12:50 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, 12:54 which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, 12:57 will He not much more clothe you, 13:00 O you of little faith?" Amen and amen. 13:03 You know, God, He wants us to look 13:06 at the beauty out there. 13:07 And what does that beauty tell us? 13:09 Well, it tells us about God's flawless aesthetic taste. 13:14 God is an artist 13:18 and if He cares about that, He cares about you. 13:22 And, you know, when you look at a newborn baby 13:25 and how perfect they are 13:27 and consider all the little parts 13:30 that how they were knit together in the womb. 13:33 You see that God is a God that His creative ability 13:39 goes beyond anything you and I could fathom. 13:42 And when we have the hope and the joy of the Lord, 13:45 I think it opens our eyes to see all of these things. 13:48 Exactly. 13:49 And poor Darwin had neither so all he saw was the negative. 13:54 Well, we are going to take a quick break, 13:57 but we want you to stay tuned because in our second segment 14:01 we have a special guest who's going to give in 14:05 life application of this. |
Revised 2019-03-28