<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Matthew Priebe

Spotlights on Creation - Part 2

This will be the part 2 of Spotlights on Creation, where we take a closer look at some of the areas of nature that really showcase God's creativity, His power, and His design.

And we're going to start out with a very important topic, Because a lot of the animals that I'm showing you today and in most of my creation science presentations are predators.

When we look at all the animals out there, why am I not just talking about the cute bunnies that eat grass?

I'm talking about the hawks that come down and eat those cute bunnies, and we know that God didn't make it that way.

So it's a very important concept to really understand how sin has affected the nature that God has created.

Without this understanding, we will forever be kind of confused when we talk about the animals out there, because we'll have a hard time figuring out why animals are killing each other and still well designed by God.

So that's where we're going to start our program with this afternoon, Sin in Nature.

In the beginning, God created the earth and all plants and animals.

Everything was perfect and worked together flawlessly.

No death, decay, killing took place in the balanced world where Adam and Eve lived.

But then they sinned, and pain and death began.

Satan now had permission to twist and corrupt the world to make life evil and unpleasant.

If left unchanged, the world would have spiraled into chaos, and soon all life would have perished.

He remade life to fit the new conditions, making the best of the situation.

Many plants became poisonous or were covered by thorns.

This is dangerous and annoying to us, but is useful protection for the plants.

Toxic sap, deadly chemical compounds, and dagger-tipped leaves all serve to deter animals from eating the plants.

Some animals became parasites, living inside or on other animals.

Others became scavengers or outright killers, eating the flesh of other animals.

This is actually more widespread than most of us realize, since the eating of other animals include birds that eat insects, whales that eat krill, and cormorants that eat fish, and most ocean life.

Humans were just as damaged as the rest of the world.

We are subject to illness and death and pain.

But even worse, we have inherited a nature that is prone to selfishness and pride and a host of other temptations.

Our personal relationships with God and other people are a sad echo of what existed in Eden.

However, God had a plan B for the world's problems.

To prevent all life from collapsing, drastic changes to many plants and animals became necessary.

Plants were changed to survive in habitats that never existed in Eden.

Deserts now have cacti and drought-tolerant trees.

Prairies have grasses that can survive frequent burning.

Swamps have plants that can survive constant flooding.

Conifers can survive cold and snowy winters.

Some people assume that the predators, animals that eat other animals, originated with Satan's efforts to pervert life.

But predators actually are needed in a death-filled world.

Without predators, plant-eating animals would soon run out of food and starve.

By eating other animals, predators perform a vital role in our sin-cursed nature, preventing disease outbreaks and overpopulation problems in every ecosystem.

History has shown that wherever predators are killed by humans, the animals they normally eat will rise dramatically.

Soon the system becomes unbalanced and mass starvation results, as there are too many plant eaters feeding on a limited supply of plant foods.

This is why North America has more deer now than ever recorded before, despite the massive sport hunting efforts of the last century.

Sport hunting has actually failed to reduce deer numbers in the long run, leading to huge winter starvation, regular disease outbreaks, and unpleasant deer encounters with gardeners and farmers and cars.

All of these problems stem from our replacement of natural predator control with our own artificial methods.

Predators are the main control mechanism God chose to maintain nature's stability.

When we look at predators, sometimes we don't realize how different they are from plant-eating animals.

Predator teeth are built to cut and tear, not grind and browse.

Even the mineral content of their teeth are quite different in order to make it possible for them to break bones.

Predator intestines are much shorter than herbivore intestines in order to digest their food properly.

An herbivore looks at a leaf or grass blade and sees that that is food.

A predator looks at the same leaf and is uninterested, instead turning to another animal as food.

All of these are huge differences that must have changed when Adam and Eve sinned.

For if these changes happen gradually from natural forces, then evolutionists are right.

But evolution is incapable of turning a vegetarian animal to a meat-eating 1, for we never see it happening today.

So all of these changes had to happen immediately, and only God has the power to do something this dramatic.

But God knew these changes were needed for a sin-damaged world to survive, and so He recreated a huge segment of life.

But sin is only a temporary evil that will soon be destroyed.

Thanks to Christ's perfect sacrifice, Satan and sin will soon lose control of this world.

All the corruption will be burned away and Jesus will make a new earth.

The redeemed will experience unending peace and joy.

Nature at long last will be restored to its original purity.

No longer will plants need special defenses to avoid being eaten.

No longer will animals compete for limited food or eat each other.

Isaiah envisions this happy day in chapter 11, verses 6 and 9.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

For God's faithful, all pain will be forgotten and no tears will again fall.

But until that blessed day comes, we must live in this world and deal with the results of sin.

We must fulfill our role in God's creation, doing the job He has ordained for those made in His image.

In Genesis, God gave man dominion over the earth and other species that inhabit it.

This has been used by sinful man to excuse any act of destruction, cruelty, or negligence that we may wish to inflict on the other life forms that God created.

But dominion does not mean tyranny, dictatorship, or exploitation.

It meant stewardship in the Bible when applied to God's dominion over us, and it meant stewardship when applied to our dominion over the earth.

The animals' lives are in our hands, and it is our dominion responsibility not to increase their suffering by our selfishness and greed.

What we eat, what we wear, how we entertain ourselves, and how we make money all have an impact on God's animals, and we need to act out of love to do the least harm that we can do.

The delicate systems of the earth are easily broken by our actions as well.

When we put profit first, we end up losing habitat and inhabitants both.

This often seems irrelevant to our structured lives, but in fact we are hurting ourselves as much as we are damaging nature.

When we poison the land and water and air, we are making life harder and more unpleasant for ourselves.

Our own health is important to God as well.

He has given us free choice, and this means our actions have consequences.

When we damage our own bodies through neglect or actively poisoning ourselves with the food and drugs that we consume, we are unfaithful to the talents God has entrusted to us.

Sin is the reality of our world until Jesus returns to restore everything to the original perfection.

Nature is still beautiful, and the interrelations of the plants and animals amaze us with their complexity and their diversity.

Nature is God's second book of inspiration, revealing His care and planning for all of His creation.

But we have even greater wonders to study and enjoy in the new world to come.

Let us be always faithful to our Father's will so that we will be ready for that day to come soon." And now we start again to spotlight the groups of nature that really are fascinating.

And we're going to start with some of the strangest of all, the fungi.

Fungi are 1 of the strangest and most interesting forms of life in God's entire creation.

The parts of fungi that most people recognize are called mushrooms.

We are very familiar with mushrooms, but most of us are unaware of how unusual they really are.

When you look at a mushroom, what are you seeing?

The colorful above-ground structure is only the tip of the iceberg.

It is the reproductive component of fungi, the source of spores that will drift on the wind and start new fungi growth elsewhere.

A large bracket-shell fungus will produce 20 million spores a minute, and will do so for up to 5 months.

Each spore can start a new fungus if it lands on the right spot.

The actual fungi are the hidden tendrils that grow through wood and soil.

Concealed from view, these white tendrils grow and spread through every available source of nourishment.

Back to Menu

Spotlights on Creation - Part 2

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Medical Missionary Workshop

01 Medical Missionary Work and the Cycle of Evangelism

37m

Plenary

The Message of the Cross

38m

The Principle of GIGO on Pandemics: Reaping What We Sow

45m

Intensive: Home Gardening

Home Gardening - Part 4

46m

Estate Planning

Estate Planning - Part 2: Who Will Have the Power

59m

Morning Devotional

Sexual Purity: Lost and Found

46m

The History and Role of Outpost Ministries

1h 11m

Testimonies

Testimonies Sabbath School Panel

39m

How to Share Ellen White: End Time Dynamite

58m

A Concise Guide to Primitive Godliness

01 - A Concise Guide to the Christian Life

32m

World's Problems and God's People

Session 2: Poverty

47m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dealing with Conflict and Adversity in Personal Liberty

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine