Creation Says, “They Are Inexcusable”
“His invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.”—ROMANS 1:20.
1, 2. (a) What bitter complaint did Job make to Jehovah? (b) What retraction did Job subsequently make?
JOB, a man of ancient times who possessed unbreakable integrity to Jehovah God, had been put to a terrible test by Satan. The Devil had caused Job to lose all of his material possessions, had brought the death of his sons and daughters, and had afflicted him with a loathsome disease. Job thought it was God bringing these calamities upon him, and he complained bitterly to Jehovah: “Is it good for you that you should do wrong, . . . that you should try to find my error and for my sin you should keep looking? This in spite of your own knowledge that I am not in the wrong?”—Job 1:12-19; 2:5-8; 10:3, 6, 7.
2 Some time after this, Job’s words to God reflected a complete reversal: “I talked, but I was not understanding things too wonderful for me, which I do not know. In hearsay I have heard about you, but now my own eye does see you. That is why I make a retraction, and I do repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:3, 5, 6) What had happened to change Job’s attitude?
3. What new viewpoint did Job acquire concerning creation?
3 In the interim, Jehovah had confronted Job out of the windstorm. (Job 38:1) He had plied Job with questions. ‘Where were you when I founded the earth? Who barricaded the sea with doors and set limits on where its waves could come? Can you cause the clouds to drop their rain on the earth? Can you cause the grass to grow? Can you bind together the constellations and guide them in their courses?’ Throughout chapters 38 to 41 of the book of Job, Jehovah rained down on Job these questions and many more about His creation. He made Job see the tremendous gulf between God and man, forcefully reminding Job of the wisdom and power reflected in God’s creation, things far beyond the power of Job to perform or even to understand. Job, overwhelmed by the awesome power and incredible wisdom of the almighty God as revealed through His creations, was appalled to think that he had had the audacity to argue with Jehovah. So he said: “In hearsay I have heard about you, but now my own eye does see you.”—Job 42:5.
4. What should we perceive from Jehovah’s creations, and what is the situation with those who fail to see it?
4 Many centuries later an inspired Bible writer confirmed that Jehovah’s qualities could be seen through his creations. The apostle Paul wrote at Romans 1:19, 20: “What may be known about God is manifest among them, for God made it manifest to them. For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.”
5. (a) What inborn need do humans have, and how is it improperly filled by some? (b) What was Paul’s recommendation to the Greeks in Athens?
5 Man was created with an inborn need to worship a higher power. Dr. C. G. Jung, in his book The Undiscovered Self, referred to this need as “an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history.” The apostle Paul spoke of man’s inborn urge to worship, which explained why the Greeks in Athens made images and altars to many gods, known and unknown. Paul also identified the true God to them and showed that they should satisfy this innate urge correctly by seeking Jehovah the true God, “if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us.” (Acts 17:22-30) As near as we are to his creations, just that near we are to perceiving his qualities and attributes.
The Amazing Water Cycle
6. What qualities of Jehovah do we see in the water cycle?
6 What qualities of Jehovah do we perceive, for example, in the ability of fluffy clouds to hold tons of water? We see his love and wisdom, for he thus provides rain showers for earth’s blessing. He does this by means of the wonderful design involved in the water cycle, mentioned at Ecclesiastes 1:7: “All the winter torrents are going forth to the sea, yet the sea itself is not full. To the place where the winter torrents are going forth, there they are returning so as to go forth.” The Bible book of Job is specific on how it happens.
7. How does water get from the ocean to the clouds, and how can fluffy clouds hold tons of water?
7 When the winter torrents flow to the sea, they do not stay there. Jehovah “draws up drops of water from the sea and distils rain from the mist he has made.” Because the water is in the form of water vapor and ultimately a fine mist, “the clouds hang poised overhead, a wonderful work of his consummate skill.” (Job 36:27; 37:16; The New English Bible) The clouds float as long as they are mist: “He fastens up the waters in his clouds—the mists do not tear apart under their weight.” Or as another translation says: “He keeps the waters penned in dense cloud-masses, and the clouds do not burst open under their weight.”—Job 26:8, The Jerusalem Bible; NE.
8. By what different steps are “the water jars of heaven” tipped over and the water cycle completed?
8 These “water jars of heaven—who can tip them over” to cause rain to fall to earth? (Job 38:37) The One whose “consummate skill” put them there in the first place, who “distils rain from the mist he has made.” And what is needed to distill raindrops from the mists? There must be microscopic solid matter, such as dust or salt particles—from thousands to hundreds of thousands of them in each cubic inch [cm] of air—to act as nuclei for droplets to form around. It is estimated that it takes a million of the tiny cloud droplets to make up an average raindrop. Only after all this development can the clouds drop their torrents to earth to form the streams that return the water to the sea. Thus the water cycle completes itself. And all of this by blind chance? “Inexcusable,” indeed!
One Source of Solomon’s Wisdom
9. What did Solomon find remarkable about one species of ant?
9 In the ancient world, the wisdom of Solomon was unparalleled. Much of that wisdom concerned Jehovah’s creation: “[Solomon] would speak about the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that is coming forth on the wall; and he would speak about the beasts and about the flying creatures and about the moving things and about the fishes.” (1 Kings 4:33) It was this same King Solomon who wrote: “Go to the ant, you lazy one; see its ways and become wise. Although it has no commander, officer or ruler, it prepares its food even in the summer; it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest.”—Proverbs 6:6-8.
10. How was Solomon’s illustration about harvester ants vindicated?
10 Who taught the ants to store food in summer to see them through the cold of winter? For centuries the accuracy of Solomon’s account of these ants that harvested seeds and stored them for use in winter was doubted. No one had found any evidence of their existence. In 1871, however, a British naturalist discovered their underground granaries, and the Bible’s accuracy in reporting on them was vindicated. But how did these ants acquire the foresight to know in summer that winter’s cold lay ahead and the wisdom to know what to do about it? The Bible itself explains that many of Jehovah’s creations have a wisdom programmed into them for their survival. The harvester ants are recipients of this blessing from their Creator. Proverbs 30:24 speaks of it: “They are instinctively wise.” To say that such wisdom could just happen by chance is unreasonable; to fail to perceive a wise Creator behind it is inexcusable.
11. (a) Why is the giant sequoia tree so awesome? (b) What is so amazing about the first reaction in photosynthesis?
11 A man at the foot of a giant sequoia tree, amazed at its massive grandeur, understandably feels like a small ant. The tree’s size is awesome: 300 feet [90 m] tall, 36 feet [11 m] in diameter, bark 2 feet [0.6 m] thick, roots spreading out over three or four acres [1.2 to 1.6 ha]. Yet, far more awesome is the chemistry and physics involved in its growth. Its leaves take water from the roots, carbon dioxide from the air, and energy from the sun to manufacture sugars and give off oxygen—a process called photosynthesis that involves some 70 chemical reactions, not all of which are understood. Amazingly, the first reaction depends upon light from the sun that is just the right color, the right wavelength; otherwise it would not be absorbed by the chlorophyll molecules to initiate the process of photosynthesis.
12. (a) What is remarkable about the sequoia tree’s use of water? (b) Why is nitrogen needed in plant growth, and how is its cycle completed?
12 Also amazing is the fact that the tree can draw up columns of water from the roots to the top of this 300-foot-high [90 m] colossus. Much more water is drawn up than is needed for photosynthesis. The excess is given off through the leaves by transpiration into the air. It makes the tree water-cooled, somewhat like our being cooled by perspiration. To form protein for growth, nitrogen needs to be added to the sugars, or carbohydrates. The leaf cannot use gaseous nitrogen taken from the air, but soil organisms can turn the gaseous nitrogen in the earth into nitrates and nitrites soluble in water, which then travel from the roots up to the leaves. When plants and animals that have used this nitrogen in their proteins die and decompose, the nitrogen is released, completing the nitrogen cycle. In all of this, the complexity involved is staggering, hardly a task for chance to perform.
Without Speech or Words or Voice, They Speak!
13. What did the starry heavens declare to David, and what do they continue to say to us?
13 What an awesome reflection of the Creator it is that comes from a star-packed night sky that fills viewers with reverence! At Psalm 8:3, 4, David expressed the awe he felt: “When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have prepared, what is mortal man that you keep him in mind, and the son of earthling man that you take care of him?” To those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to feel, these starry heavens speak, as they did to David: “The heavens are declaring the glory of God.”—Psalm 19:1-4.
14. Why is the dynamic energy of one of the stars so vital to us?
14 The more we know about stars, the louder they speak to us. At Isaiah 40:26, we are invited to note their tremendous energy: “Raise your eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one of them is missing.” The force of gravity and the dynamic energy of one of them, our sun, hold the earth in place in its orbit, make plants grow, keep us warm, and make all life possible here on the earth. The apostle Paul under inspiration said: “Star differs from star in glory.” (1 Corinthians 15:41) Science knows of yellow stars like our sun, also blue stars, red giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars, and exploding supernovas that unleash incomprehensible power.
15. What have many inventors learned from creation and tried to imitate?
15 Many inventors have learned from creation and have attempted to copy the abilities of living creatures. (Job 12:7-10) Note just a few outstanding aspects of creation. Seabirds with glands that desalt seawater; fish and eels that generate electricity; fish, worms, and insects that produce cold light; bats and dolphins that use sonar; wasps that make paper; ants that build bridges; beavers that build dams; snakes that have built-in thermometers; pond insects that use snorkels and diving bells; octopuses that use jet propulsion; spiders that make seven kinds of webs and make trapdoors, nets, and lassos and that have babies who are balloonists, traveling thousands of miles [kilometers] at great heights; fish and crustaceans that use flotation tanks like submarines; and birds, insects, sea turtles, fish, and mammals that perform amazing feats of migration—abilities beyond science’s power to explain.
16. What scientific truths did the Bible record thousands of years before science discovered them?
16 The Bible recorded scientific truths thousands of years before science knew of them. The Mosaic Law (16th century B.C.E.) reflected awareness of disease germs thousands of years before Pasteur. (Leviticus, chapters 13, 14) In the 17th century B.C.E., Job stated: “He is . . . hanging the earth upon nothing.” (Job 26:7) A thousand years before Christ, Solomon wrote about the circulation of the blood; medical science had to wait until the 17th century to learn about it. (Ecclesiastes 12:6) Before that, Psalm 139:16 reflected knowledge of the genetic code: “Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, and in your book all its parts were down in writing, as regards the days when they were formed and there was not yet one among them.” In the 7th century B.C.E., before naturalists understood about migration, Jeremiah wrote, as recorded at Jeremiah 8:7: “The stork in the sky knows the time to migrate, the dove and the swift and the wryneck know the season of return.”—NE.
The “Creator” That Evolutionists Are Choosing
17. (a) What does Romans 1:21-23 say about some who refuse to see an intelligent Creator behind created wonders? (b) In a sense, what are evolutionists choosing as their “creator”?
17 One scripture says concerning some who refuse to perceive an intelligent Creator behind the created wonders: “They became empty-headed in their reasonings and their unintelligent heart became darkened. Although asserting they were wise, they became foolish and turned the glory of the incorruptible God into something like the image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed creatures and creeping things.” They “exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the One who created.” (Romans 1:21-23, 25) It is similar with evolutionary scientists, who, in effect, glorify an imaginary ascending chain of protozoa-worms-fish-amphibians-reptiles-mammals-“ape-men” as their “creator.” They know, however, that there is no truly simple one-celled organism to start the chain. The simplest known organism contains a hundred billion atoms, with thousands of chemical reactions occurring within it simultaneously.
18, 19. (a) Who is the rightful One to be credited with originating life? (b) How much of Jehovah’s creation can we see?
18 Jehovah God is the Creator of life. (Psalm 36:9) He is the great First Cause. His name, Jehovah, means “He causes to become.” His creations are beyond our numbering. Certainly there are millions more than man is aware of. Psalm 104:24, 25 hints at this: “How many your works are, O Jehovah! All of them in wisdom you have made.” Job 26:14 is explicit on this: “Look! These are the fringes of his ways, and what a whisper of a matter has been heard of him! But of his mighty thunder who can show an understanding?” We see a few fringes, we hear a few whispers, but to catch the full import of his mighty thunder is beyond us.
19 We do, however, have a better source for seeing him than through his physical creations. That better source is his Word, the Bible. To that source we now turn in the following article.
Do You Remember?
◻ What did Job learn when Jehovah spoke to him out of the windstorm?
◻ Why did Paul say that some were inexcusable?
◻ How does the water cycle work?
◻ What important things does sunlight do for us?
◻ What scientific truths did the Bible reveal before science discovered them?