October 20, 2025 • 31 mins
Start with a world that looks arranged and ask the most honest question: who arranged it? We walk up the Areopagus with Paul, listen to his bold claim that God made “the world and all things in it,” and then follow that claim into modern labs, star fields, and the quiet intricacy of a single living cell. From the intuitive logic of Mount Rushmore to the stubborn math behind monkeys at typewriters, we weigh whether time and chance can truly write coherent sentences—much less encode the deep, layered information of DNA.
Together we unpack why Paul began with origins when speaking to curious, skeptical minds. The term he chose—cosmos—means order and arrangement, and that word shapes how we read everything from gravitational harmony to biochemical choreography. Along the way, we hear how thinkers like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and even a late-life Anthony Flew saw purpose in the fabric of reality. We revisit Darwin’s own cautions and explore why the discovery of information-rich systems in the cell complicates a purely unguided story of life. Far from shutting down science, this vision of creation energizes it—inviting us to seek laws because we trust the Lawgiver and to ask better questions because we expect real answers.
All of this lands close to home. If a God wise enough to order galaxies also numbers our days, then trust is not blind; it’s fitting. We talk frankly about the cultural costs of denying design—how meaning, morality, and hope begin to slip—and we point to a better foundation: Christ the Creator, the one who holds all things together and can steady our steps. If He keeps the planet spinning and the Milky Way in motion, He can guide a week, a decision, a life. Listen, share with a friend who loves science and good questions, and if this conversation moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: where do you see design most clearly?
Stephen's latest book, The Disciples Prayer, is available now. https://www.wisdomonline.org/store/view/the-disciples-prayer-hardback
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:05):
Listen to what Nehemiah said in his own
journal.
You alone are the Lord.
You made the heaven of heavenswith all the starry hosts, the
earth and all that is on it, theseas and all that is in them.
You give life to everything.
This is exactly what Paul issaying.
(00:27):
Next, he adds the exclamationpoint.
Notice that the Creator God isthe Lord of heaven and earth.
It isn't too big for him tomanage.
He is Lord.
He is master of heaven andearth.
SPEAKER_00 (00:52):
When God created everything that exists, he
created a sophisticated,complex, fully functioning
universe.
From the most distant galaxy tothe smallest particle, God
created everything.
God as the creator is our themetoday here on Wisdom for the
Heart.
(01:13):
When introducing pre-Christianpeople to Jesus, Paul didn't
start at the manger or the crossor the empty toe.
He started at the very beginningof time.
Every question of theology,philosophy, and science begins
with Genesis 1.
Stephen Davy returns to Acts 17today with this message called
(01:37):
In the Beginning.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Imagine hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
And as you round a corner, youcome upon a sight that stops you
in your tracks in front of you,and stretching up into the sky
are four giant faces.
They look exactly like GeorgeWashington, Thomas Jefferson,
(02:03):
Teddy Roosevelt, and AbrahamLincoln.
Now, how in the world did thesefaces appear on this
mountainside?
Maybe over millions of yearsthey took shape by random
accident and earthquakes.
Perhaps over millions of years,wind and rain and erosion and
rock slides combined to carvethese faces into stone.
(02:30):
Now, who would conceivablyconsider those probabilities?
The truth is, these four faces Ithought would be a wonderful
illustration to reveal the threefundamental principles of
design (02:44):
forethought, planning, and intention.
Mount Rushmore, if you knowanything about it, I've never
been there.
One of the guys backstage herein the band said they'd been
there and it made me wish I hadhad a chance to see it in real
life, but I haven't.
But it was the brainchild ofJohn Borglum.
(03:04):
He and his team decided to carveinto the face of this mountain
these famous Americans, whichreveals intention.
It would take 400 workers towork with rather inventive
methods, some of them inventedjust for this project, and they
(03:25):
would remove 800 million poundsof stone from this site, from
all the dynamite blasting.
That was planning.
Before any blasting took place,the designers mapped out the
size and shape of each face,each president's face.
(03:48):
The eyes are eleven feet across,their mouths are 18 feet wide,
their noses are 20 feet long.
If you think you have a longnose, be encouraged.
Theirs are 20 feet long.
And the entire project thusreveals forethought.
(04:09):
Now you would never think in amillion years that Mount
Rushmore came into existence asa result of the well-worn
evolutionary formula that chanceplus time equals design.
No, design equals forethought,intention, and planning.
(04:31):
Let me give you anotherillustration.
This is from Anthony Flew, oneof the most noted atheists in
the world.
He shocked the intellectualcommunity by publishing a book,
His Own Journey, His Own Battle,and it was published in 2004 and
it kind of took the public bysurprise, where he declared that
(04:54):
he changed his mind.
He was no longer an atheist, atbest a deist, at best a believer
and a creator.
In his book entitled, There Is aGod, Flew reflects on the
argument underpinning humanorigin that he had to deal with
in his younger days.
He writes, and I quote, theargument ran like this given
(05:17):
enough time and chance, life onplanet Earth could have just
happened without any design,certainly, from a creator God.
He references an experiment,researchers who tried to prove
this example of time plus chanceequals life.
It's a theory, and behind it, awell-known experiment.
I'd heard about this.
(05:39):
Robbie Zacharias talked about itin one of his articles, but uh I
didn't realize that it hadactually taken place in an
effort to prove that time pluschance equals something
intelligent.
And the the uh experiment tookplace in the United Kingdom, and
it was based on the question: how long would it take an (05:55):
undefined
infinite number of monkeyspounding away at an infinite
number of typewriters to come upwith an intelligible word or a
sentence or maybe even a sonnetfrom Shakespeare?
Now, if you can believe it, theyactually put a bunch of monkeys
(06:17):
in a room with typewriters andlet them go.
Six of them, in fact.
And after one month of hammeringaway at the keys, the monkeys
produced 50 typed pages.
Now never mind that somebody hadto create the typewriter and
load it with paper, that aside,but 50 typed pages.
(06:38):
Still, after one month, theyproduced, however, not one
single word.
Not one word, he writes, whichis amazing considering that the
shortest word in English couldbe a one-letter word, such as
the letter A or I, but aone-letter word is only a word
if there's a space on eitherside of it, and that never
(06:58):
happened.
Flew pointed out that if oneconsiders that there are 30 keys
on a keyboard, the probabilityof typing at least one
one-letter word is one in27,000, not all that much.
So if these attempts, he writes,could not even result in one
one-letter word, what was thepossibility that these monkeys
(07:19):
could type the first line of oneof Shakespeare's sonnets, much
less a simple sentence like, seeJack, run.
Yet, he contends, contemporaryscientists keep telling us that
monkeys can do it with enoughtime.
He wrote, the entire universe,which is infinitely more complex
(07:40):
than a Shakespearean sonnet,could not have been designed by
allowing enough time plus chanceto work.
There had to be a designer, andhe said, effectively, my atheism
cracked and eventually crumbledaway.
He joined a host of scientists,by the way, over the years, and
I did a little research.
(08:00):
And let me give you some quotesof some of them.
Nicholas Copernicus wrote in the16th century, who could live in
close contact with the mostconsummate order and wisdom and
not adore the architect.
Kepler wrote, one of the world'sgreatest astronomers, wrote a
century later, in the 17thcentury, My Lord and my creator,
(08:21):
I would like to proclaim themagnificence of your works to
the extent that my limitedintelligence can understand.
Isaac Newton, the 18th century,the founder of classical
theoretical physics.
You know, I didn't have anyclassical theoretical physics
classes in school.
(08:41):
I was more suited for recess.
I don't know about you, but thatwas the extent of my.
But anyhow, Newton wrote, and Iquote, the arrangement and
harmony of the universe couldonly have come from the plan of
an omniscient and omnipotentbeing.
Alan Sandaj or Sandaj said this: I was practically an atheist in (08:56):
undefined
my childhood.
Science was what led me, I lovethis, science was what led me to
the conclusion that the world ismuch more complex than we can
explain.
I can only explain the mysteryof existence by the
(09:20):
supernatural.
The truth is, we as human beingstoday have, as it were, suddenly
stumbled around a corner andwe're looking up into the face
of an incredibly wonderful andcomplex world and universe.
Everywhere we look are theevidences of forethought,
(09:42):
intention, and planning, whichequals design.
The Apostle Paul wrote to theRomans that if you just stop
suppressing the truth stamped onyour heart about a creator,
you'll be drawn to marvel at theattributes of God that are
evident in this createduniverse.
(10:02):
That same apostle, 1900 yearsago now, stood before the
Supreme Court of Athens on topof that wind-swept, jutting,
mountainous rock known as theAreopagus.
And he said to them, There is acreator, and I happen to know
who he is.
(10:23):
In fact, that's his first lineof reasoning in this passage
we've been studying.
So take your New Testament andgo back to Acts chapter 17, and
let's go back up that hill withPaul.
By the way, while you'returning, mankind has always had
origins.
We just happen to be living in ageneration of one particular one
(10:45):
that seems to have taken root.
By 1881, there were 80 theoriesof origins.
And Paul is addressing a worldthat had their own theory that
had sort of taken the Athenianmind.
Here is their theory, by theway, of origins, as Paul is
going to introduce to them God.
(11:08):
The Athenians believed that thesemen of one of their gods,
Hephaestus, spilled on theground in a failed attempt to
rape Athena, their patrongoddess.
And as his semen came in contactwith another goddess, the
goddess Earth, known as Gaia,she ended up getting pregnant
(11:33):
accidentally and ended up thusdelivering the human race.
That takes no faith to believeat all.
That's so easy to understand.
That's how the human race gotits origin.
Now the Athenians were notatheists.
No God.
Ah, theist.
They were polytheists, manygods.
(11:54):
But they were just as far fromthe truth in their pantheism as
the atheist was.
But they're still asking thesame questions.
Was the universe put together byaccident?
Were human beings created to betoyed with, they believed, or
(12:14):
maybe tortured, as they alsobelieved?
All of the above was believed byPaul's generation.
So in Acts chapter 17, as Paulbegins to introduce the unknown
God to them, he effectivelytakes them as he does with
Gentile audiences, and you'llsee this happening in the
scriptures over and over again.
They take the audience all theway back to Genesis chapter 1
(12:38):
and verse 1.
In the beginning, God.
And what's the first thing youlearn about that propositional
statement that begins thebiblical record?
In the beginning, God, what'sthe next word?
Created.
In the beginning, God createdthe heavens and the earth.
(12:58):
In other words, the heavens andthe earth are the designed
result of God's intention,forethought, and planning.
Well, let's go back to Paul'sexact words in Acts chapter 17.
We'll cover one verse here if wehurry.
Look at verse 24.
Verse 24.
(13:19):
Here he begins now.
The God who made the world andall things in it, since he is
Lord of heaven and earth, doesnot dwell in temples made with
hands.
Now, by the way, that lastlittle statement, I can just see
Paul gesturing.
He's on the Areopagus, on thewindswept open courtroom where
the Supreme Court sat.
(13:39):
He could have easily, in mymind, I imagine him just sort of
gesturing around for all of themto see because Athens is dotted
with one temple after another,including the magnificent
Parthenon.
They were everywhere.
Paul arrives and effectivelysays, you're right, there is a
(14:01):
God you don't know about, andhe's going to say a lot about
him, by the way, that whittlesit down from atheism or
polytheism to monotheism.
He says, there is a God youdon't know about.
But I want you to notice howPaul informs them that this God
doesn't need anything createdfor him because he happens to
(14:21):
have created all that is.
That's what he says.
Notice again, he's the God whocreated the world and all things
in it.
Now, the word Paul uses forworld in verse 24 is the word
cosmos.
It refers to the sum total andthe arrangement of all that
exist.
The word cosmos is carefullychosen by Paul the apologist.
(14:46):
He actually uses a word thatevery Athenian philosopher would
have known well to refer to theorder and arrangement.
In fact, it was used to theorder and arrangement of the
political system in Athens.
Plato, a famous scholar ofancient Athens, used the word
(15:06):
cosmos, in fact, for that whichis well ordered and arranged.
In fact, we happen to have onerather interesting illustration
where Plato used the word cosmosto refer to the order and
arrangement in which a womanputs on her makeup.
First this layer, and then thislayer, and then the next layer.
(15:28):
I'm sure Mrs.
Plato didn't appreciate thatillustration, but he he used it.
I don't know who the philosopherwas who said, well, if the barn
door needs painting, and thereason we don't know who it is
is because his body has neverbeen found.
Just so you know.
All that to say, cosmos gives usthe word cosmetics.
(15:48):
The arrangement of cosmetics orthe arrangement of the face.
Now, what Paul is implying hereis that when you detect the
cosmos, the universe, and younotice the arrangement and the
order, someone has effectivelytaken a brush and applied it
(16:11):
that way.
The beauty and order of life inthe cosmos is the cosmetic brush
stroke of creator God.
For by him, the Apostle Paulwrote to the Colossians, all
things were created, both in theheavens and on earth, visible
(16:35):
and invisible, all things havebeen created through him and for
him.
And Paul clarifies here (16:39):
did you notice he created the world, now
notice, and all things.
That's his way, by the way, ofclosing every loophole.
And all things.
That would include aliensseeding the universe, okay?
It would include billions ofyears of enough time plus enough
(17:00):
chance encounters with wind orerosion or ice or meteor or
whatever, or billions of yearsto fashion you and me.
No, he created all things.
All things.
This word all things refers tosimply all the world contains.
Linguists say it refers to allinanimate objects such as stars,
(17:23):
mountains, rivers, seas, and allanimate objects, such as plants,
animals, angelic beings, and thehuman race.
Now that doesn't mean God didn'tset in motion the laws of nature
for joining in God's ultimateintention by procreating a child
or for plants and animals toproduce after their own kind.
(17:47):
What it does mean is thateverything that exists is the
result of God's divineforethought, intention, and
plan.
Listen to what Nehemiah said inhis own journal.
You alone are the Lord.
You made the heavens, the heavenof heavens, with all the starry
(18:09):
host, the earth and all that ison it, the seas and all that is
in them.
You give life to everything.
Nehemiah 9, verse 6.
This is exactly what Paul issaying.
Next he adds the exclamationpoint.
Notice that the Creator God isthe Lord of heaven and earth.
(18:30):
He's not subject to theuniverse.
He's not caught off guard bywhat happens in the universe.
It isn't too big for him tomanage.
He is Lord.
He is master of heaven andearth.
He is the creator behind thecosmos.
(18:51):
I love the story of CharlesBoyle, who was a devoted
Christian several centuries ago.
He was fascinated with Kepler'sand Newton's discoveries about
planetary motion and theintricate design.
Boyle hired a watchmaker todesign an actual working
mechanical model of the solarsystem that demonstrated the
(19:14):
motion of the planets around thesun.
They all moved mechanicallyaccording to the pattern of
their orbit.
It's quite marvelous.
An incredible display of skilland precision.
On one occasion, Boyle wasshowing the model to a man he'd
been praying for, an atheisticscientist.
(19:37):
And the atheist was extremelyimpressed with the clockwork
model.
And the atheist said, this iswhat Boyle was hoping for, the
atheist said, This is anincredible, impressive model.
Who made it?
And Boyle responded, Nobody.
It just appeared.
(19:58):
David, the psalmist, praised Godby writing, By the word of the
Lord the heavens were made, andby the breath of his mouth all
their host.
He gathers the waters of the seatogether in a heap.
He lays up the depths andstorehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of theworld stand in awe of him.
(20:19):
I love that.
For he spoke, and it was done.
Takes you back to Genesis 1.
And he said, and he said, and hesaid.
The plans of his heart, Davidwrites.
The plans of his heart.
From generation to generation.
Psalm 33, 6 to 10.
(20:40):
You know, David is singing aboutthe forethought and intention
and planning of our Creator God.
And I love the way David addsthat little line, when the world
comes to understand that, and byfaith believe it, all the world
stands in awe of God.
Isn't that what you do?
When you learn something, whenyou read some discovery, when
(21:02):
the archaeologist turns over hisspade, when when when you see
something, you know, on yourcomputer screen, when you look
at the photograph of the of theHubble who wasn't sent out there
by the way to defendChristianity, but when you see
those photographs, you stand inawe of God.
We find in Christ the Creatorthe object of our highest
(21:26):
praise.
We find in Christ the hope inour deepest valley.
We find in Christ the answer tolife's greatest mysteries.
Today our country is mired inthe latest theory that includes
the leap of faith proposed byCharles Darwin.
(21:47):
And by the way, it takes as muchfaith to believe that species
evolved into other specieswithout any evidence in the
fossil record as it took thefaith of the Athenians to
believe the human race was theresult of one of their gods
accidentally impregnating Earth.
And it takes faith to believethe propositional statement in
(22:10):
the beginning that God created.
And I say that to say this thequestion is not, do you have
faith?
The question is, to what haveyou pinned your faith?
In the 1800s, Darwin believedthe cell, the smallest unit of
life, was simply a lump ofcarbon.
(22:32):
Trouble is his theory was basedon what he couldn't see.
And he was honest enough toadmit it, by the way.
He wrote, and I quote, if it canbe demonstrated that any complex
organ existed, which could notpossibly have been formed by
numerous successivemodifications, my theory would
absolutely break down.
(22:53):
End quote.
That's exactly what happened.
Then with the invention of theelectron microscope in 1930, 48
years after the death of CharlesDarwin, mankind was finally able
to see a demonstration of thecomplexity within a single
living cell, and it was astaggering discovery.
(23:18):
Hidden from view all this time,locked inside the nucleus of a
cell, was this chemically coiledstrand that would later be named
DNA, which I'm glad it's calledDNA because I cannot pronounce
everything that that represents.
DNA.
Let me read just onedescription.
This has been, you know, celldiscovery day, I guess, this
(23:39):
morning and this evening.
But let me just read from onedescription something that
Darwin didn't know, that we knownow.
Once the egg and sperm sharetheir inheritance, the DNA
chemical ladder splits down thecenter of every gene like the
teeth of a zipper pull apart.
DNA reforms itself each time thecell divides, each cell having
(24:02):
the identical DNA.
Along the way, cells specializemysteriously.
Yet each cell carries the entireinstruction manual of 100,000
genes.
Your DNA contains instructionsthat, if written out, would fill
a thousand volumes, each volumesix hundred pages.
(24:25):
But here's what staggers myimagination in their discovery:
all of the information of theentire library are carried
within each cell.
No evolving, no adapting, butimmediately springing into
existence containing all theinformation.
(24:45):
The DNA is so compacted that allthe genes in your body's cells
could fit into an ice cube.
However, if the DNA were unwoundand joined together end to end,
the strand would stretch fromthe earth to the sun and back
again 400 times.
In other words, it has beendemonstrated that a complex
(25:06):
organ exists which could notpossibly have been formed by
numerous modifications.
So obviously the theorycollapsed and they've been
rewriting science textbooks overthe last few decades.
Not hardly.
They have dug in.
And you say, as I said tomyself, and then offer and
(25:28):
answer, if Darwin had only hadthe electron microscope, if only
he had had that, he didn't.
But you know what he had asermon by the Apostle Paul
delivered to the Areopagus.
And Charles Darwin would haveread this same chapter in the
(25:49):
book of Acts as he prepared atone point in his young adult
life to be a minister in theChurch of England.
But with what Darwin alreadyknew, he was already troubled by
the staggering cosmeticarrangement of the world.
Listen to something that is notin those textbooks.
He wrote a letter to a closefriend, which was published
(26:12):
after his death, and he wrote,and I quote, I am conscious that
I am in an utterly hopelessmuddle.
I cannot think that the world aswe see it is the result of
chance.
Again, I say I am and shall everremain in a hopeless muddle.
(26:35):
Paul effectively warns hisgeneration and ours, if you want
to muddle along, deny what is asobvious to us as four faces card
into a mountainside.
In Athens, in America, thedenials are commonplace, and
because of it, beloved, here'swhat we're dealing with in our
(26:58):
culture.
Mankind not only loses a divinedesigner, he loses a purpose and
design for his own life andmodels.
Along.
(27:29):
Every discovery points to him.
I came across this article, yetanother reason to stand in awe
of our Creator, and with this Iclose.
You may feel as if you'resitting still right now, but
it's an illusion of miraculousproportion.
(27:50):
Planet Earth is spinning aroundits axis at a speed of 1,000
miles per hour.
Every 24 hours, planet Earthpulls off a celestial 360.
We're also hurtling throughspace at an average velocity of
67,108 miles per hour.
(28:10):
That's not just faster than aspeeding bullet.
It is 87 times faster than thespeed of sound.
So even on a day when you feellike you didn't get much done,
don't forget that you actuallytraveled 1.5 million miles
through space.
But good.
(28:31):
And to top things off, while wespeed and spin along, our Milky
Way is spinning like a galacticpinwheel at the dizzying rate of
483,000 miles per hour.
That isn't miraculous.
This author said, I don't knowwhat is.
(28:52):
So, when was the last time youthanked God for keeping the
galaxy in orbit and the earthspinning on course?
I'm guessing you've neverprayed, Lord.
I wasn't sure we'd make the fullrotation today.
But you did it again.
Thank you.
(29:13):
And then his application, Markwrites, Mark Batterson writes,
if we can trust God to manageour universe and keep it in
perfect arrangement according tohis will, if we can trust God
for these big things, let'strust him for the little things,
like keeping our own lives oncourse according to his
(29:37):
intention, his forethought, andhis plan.
SPEAKER_00 (29:54):
Today's message is entitled In the Beginning.
This message is very important.
Not just for evangelism, but fora basic understanding of who God
is.
Because of that, we have itavailable in several ways.
If you'd like to share thismessage with others or listen to
it again, it's posted to ourwebsite.
(30:16):
Simply go to wisdomonline.organd you'll be able to listen.
And share the link of themessage with anyone you think
needs to hear it.
Our number once again is866-482-4253.
I'm Scott Wiley.
Thanks for joining us today.
Be with us next time for morewisdom for the heart.
Listen to what Nehemiah said in his own
journal.
You alone are the Lord.
You made the heaven of heavenswith all the starry hosts, the
earth and all that is on it, theseas and all that is in them.
You give life to everything.
This is exactly what Paul issaying.
(00:27):
Next, he adds the exclamationpoint.
Notice that the Creator God isthe Lord of heaven and earth.
It isn't too big for him tomanage.
He is Lord.
He is master of heaven andearth.
SPEAKER_00 (00:52):
When God created everything that exists, he
created a sophisticated,complex, fully functioning
universe.
From the most distant galaxy tothe smallest particle, God
created everything.
God as the creator is our themetoday here on Wisdom for the
Heart.
(01:13):
When introducing pre-Christianpeople to Jesus, Paul didn't
start at the manger or the crossor the empty toe.
He started at the very beginningof time.
Every question of theology,philosophy, and science begins
with Genesis 1.
Stephen Davy returns to Acts 17today with this message called
(01:37):
In the Beginning.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Imagine hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
And as you round a corner, youcome upon a sight that stops you
in your tracks in front of you,and stretching up into the sky
are four giant faces.
They look exactly like GeorgeWashington, Thomas Jefferson,
(02:03):
Teddy Roosevelt, and AbrahamLincoln.
Now, how in the world did thesefaces appear on this
mountainside?
Maybe over millions of yearsthey took shape by random
accident and earthquakes.
Perhaps over millions of years,wind and rain and erosion and
rock slides combined to carvethese faces into stone.
(02:30):
Now, who would conceivablyconsider those probabilities?
The truth is, these four faces Ithought would be a wonderful
illustration to reveal the threefundamental principles of
design (02:44):
forethought, planning, and intention.
Mount Rushmore, if you knowanything about it, I've never
been there.
One of the guys backstage herein the band said they'd been
there and it made me wish I hadhad a chance to see it in real
life, but I haven't.
But it was the brainchild ofJohn Borglum.
(03:04):
He and his team decided to carveinto the face of this mountain
these famous Americans, whichreveals intention.
It would take 400 workers towork with rather inventive
methods, some of them inventedjust for this project, and they
(03:25):
would remove 800 million poundsof stone from this site, from
all the dynamite blasting.
That was planning.
Before any blasting took place,the designers mapped out the
size and shape of each face,each president's face.
(03:48):
The eyes are eleven feet across,their mouths are 18 feet wide,
their noses are 20 feet long.
If you think you have a longnose, be encouraged.
Theirs are 20 feet long.
And the entire project thusreveals forethought.
(04:09):
Now you would never think in amillion years that Mount
Rushmore came into existence asa result of the well-worn
evolutionary formula that chanceplus time equals design.
No, design equals forethought,intention, and planning.
(04:31):
Let me give you anotherillustration.
This is from Anthony Flew, oneof the most noted atheists in
the world.
He shocked the intellectualcommunity by publishing a book,
His Own Journey, His Own Battle,and it was published in 2004 and
it kind of took the public bysurprise, where he declared that
(04:54):
he changed his mind.
He was no longer an atheist, atbest a deist, at best a believer
and a creator.
In his book entitled, There Is aGod, Flew reflects on the
argument underpinning humanorigin that he had to deal with
in his younger days.
He writes, and I quote, theargument ran like this given
(05:17):
enough time and chance, life onplanet Earth could have just
happened without any design,certainly, from a creator God.
He references an experiment,researchers who tried to prove
this example of time plus chanceequals life.
It's a theory, and behind it, awell-known experiment.
I'd heard about this.
(05:39):
Robbie Zacharias talked about itin one of his articles, but uh I
didn't realize that it hadactually taken place in an
effort to prove that time pluschance equals something
intelligent.
And the the uh experiment tookplace in the United Kingdom, and
it was based on the question: how long would it take an (05:55):
undefined
infinite number of monkeyspounding away at an infinite
number of typewriters to come upwith an intelligible word or a
sentence or maybe even a sonnetfrom Shakespeare?
Now, if you can believe it, theyactually put a bunch of monkeys
(06:17):
in a room with typewriters andlet them go.
Six of them, in fact.
And after one month of hammeringaway at the keys, the monkeys
produced 50 typed pages.
Now never mind that somebody hadto create the typewriter and
load it with paper, that aside,but 50 typed pages.
(06:38):
Still, after one month, theyproduced, however, not one
single word.
Not one word, he writes, whichis amazing considering that the
shortest word in English couldbe a one-letter word, such as
the letter A or I, but aone-letter word is only a word
if there's a space on eitherside of it, and that never
(06:58):
happened.
Flew pointed out that if oneconsiders that there are 30 keys
on a keyboard, the probabilityof typing at least one
one-letter word is one in27,000, not all that much.
So if these attempts, he writes,could not even result in one
one-letter word, what was thepossibility that these monkeys
(07:19):
could type the first line of oneof Shakespeare's sonnets, much
less a simple sentence like, seeJack, run.
Yet, he contends, contemporaryscientists keep telling us that
monkeys can do it with enoughtime.
He wrote, the entire universe,which is infinitely more complex
(07:40):
than a Shakespearean sonnet,could not have been designed by
allowing enough time plus chanceto work.
There had to be a designer, andhe said, effectively, my atheism
cracked and eventually crumbledaway.
He joined a host of scientists,by the way, over the years, and
I did a little research.
(08:00):
And let me give you some quotesof some of them.
Nicholas Copernicus wrote in the16th century, who could live in
close contact with the mostconsummate order and wisdom and
not adore the architect.
Kepler wrote, one of the world'sgreatest astronomers, wrote a
century later, in the 17thcentury, My Lord and my creator,
(08:21):
I would like to proclaim themagnificence of your works to
the extent that my limitedintelligence can understand.
Isaac Newton, the 18th century,the founder of classical
theoretical physics.
You know, I didn't have anyclassical theoretical physics
classes in school.
(08:41):
I was more suited for recess.
I don't know about you, but thatwas the extent of my.
But anyhow, Newton wrote, and Iquote, the arrangement and
harmony of the universe couldonly have come from the plan of
an omniscient and omnipotentbeing.
Alan Sandaj or Sandaj said this: I was practically an atheist in (08:56):
undefined
my childhood.
Science was what led me, I lovethis, science was what led me to
the conclusion that the world ismuch more complex than we can
explain.
I can only explain the mysteryof existence by the
(09:20):
supernatural.
The truth is, we as human beingstoday have, as it were, suddenly
stumbled around a corner andwe're looking up into the face
of an incredibly wonderful andcomplex world and universe.
Everywhere we look are theevidences of forethought,
(09:42):
intention, and planning, whichequals design.
The Apostle Paul wrote to theRomans that if you just stop
suppressing the truth stamped onyour heart about a creator,
you'll be drawn to marvel at theattributes of God that are
evident in this createduniverse.
(10:02):
That same apostle, 1900 yearsago now, stood before the
Supreme Court of Athens on topof that wind-swept, jutting,
mountainous rock known as theAreopagus.
And he said to them, There is acreator, and I happen to know
who he is.
(10:23):
In fact, that's his first lineof reasoning in this passage
we've been studying.
So take your New Testament andgo back to Acts chapter 17, and
let's go back up that hill withPaul.
By the way, while you'returning, mankind has always had
origins.
We just happen to be living in ageneration of one particular one
(10:45):
that seems to have taken root.
By 1881, there were 80 theoriesof origins.
And Paul is addressing a worldthat had their own theory that
had sort of taken the Athenianmind.
Here is their theory, by theway, of origins, as Paul is
going to introduce to them God.
(11:08):
The Athenians believed that thesemen of one of their gods,
Hephaestus, spilled on theground in a failed attempt to
rape Athena, their patrongoddess.
And as his semen came in contactwith another goddess, the
goddess Earth, known as Gaia,she ended up getting pregnant
(11:33):
accidentally and ended up thusdelivering the human race.
That takes no faith to believeat all.
That's so easy to understand.
That's how the human race gotits origin.
Now the Athenians were notatheists.
No God.
Ah, theist.
They were polytheists, manygods.
(11:54):
But they were just as far fromthe truth in their pantheism as
the atheist was.
But they're still asking thesame questions.
Was the universe put together byaccident?
Were human beings created to betoyed with, they believed, or
(12:14):
maybe tortured, as they alsobelieved?
All of the above was believed byPaul's generation.
So in Acts chapter 17, as Paulbegins to introduce the unknown
God to them, he effectivelytakes them as he does with
Gentile audiences, and you'llsee this happening in the
scriptures over and over again.
They take the audience all theway back to Genesis chapter 1
(12:38):
and verse 1.
In the beginning, God.
And what's the first thing youlearn about that propositional
statement that begins thebiblical record?
In the beginning, God, what'sthe next word?
Created.
In the beginning, God createdthe heavens and the earth.
(12:58):
In other words, the heavens andthe earth are the designed
result of God's intention,forethought, and planning.
Well, let's go back to Paul'sexact words in Acts chapter 17.
We'll cover one verse here if wehurry.
Look at verse 24.
Verse 24.
(13:19):
Here he begins now.
The God who made the world andall things in it, since he is
Lord of heaven and earth, doesnot dwell in temples made with
hands.
Now, by the way, that lastlittle statement, I can just see
Paul gesturing.
He's on the Areopagus, on thewindswept open courtroom where
the Supreme Court sat.
(13:39):
He could have easily, in mymind, I imagine him just sort of
gesturing around for all of themto see because Athens is dotted
with one temple after another,including the magnificent
Parthenon.
They were everywhere.
Paul arrives and effectivelysays, you're right, there is a
(14:01):
God you don't know about, andhe's going to say a lot about
him, by the way, that whittlesit down from atheism or
polytheism to monotheism.
He says, there is a God youdon't know about.
But I want you to notice howPaul informs them that this God
doesn't need anything createdfor him because he happens to
(14:21):
have created all that is.
That's what he says.
Notice again, he's the God whocreated the world and all things
in it.
Now, the word Paul uses forworld in verse 24 is the word
cosmos.
It refers to the sum total andthe arrangement of all that
exist.
The word cosmos is carefullychosen by Paul the apologist.
(14:46):
He actually uses a word thatevery Athenian philosopher would
have known well to refer to theorder and arrangement.
In fact, it was used to theorder and arrangement of the
political system in Athens.
Plato, a famous scholar ofancient Athens, used the word
(15:06):
cosmos, in fact, for that whichis well ordered and arranged.
In fact, we happen to have onerather interesting illustration
where Plato used the word cosmosto refer to the order and
arrangement in which a womanputs on her makeup.
First this layer, and then thislayer, and then the next layer.
(15:28):
I'm sure Mrs.
Plato didn't appreciate thatillustration, but he he used it.
I don't know who the philosopherwas who said, well, if the barn
door needs painting, and thereason we don't know who it is
is because his body has neverbeen found.
Just so you know.
All that to say, cosmos gives usthe word cosmetics.
(15:48):
The arrangement of cosmetics orthe arrangement of the face.
Now, what Paul is implying hereis that when you detect the
cosmos, the universe, and younotice the arrangement and the
order, someone has effectivelytaken a brush and applied it
(16:11):
that way.
The beauty and order of life inthe cosmos is the cosmetic brush
stroke of creator God.
For by him, the Apostle Paulwrote to the Colossians, all
things were created, both in theheavens and on earth, visible
(16:35):
and invisible, all things havebeen created through him and for
him.
And Paul clarifies here (16:39):
did you notice he created the world, now
notice, and all things.
That's his way, by the way, ofclosing every loophole.
And all things.
That would include aliensseeding the universe, okay?
It would include billions ofyears of enough time plus enough
(17:00):
chance encounters with wind orerosion or ice or meteor or
whatever, or billions of yearsto fashion you and me.
No, he created all things.
All things.
This word all things refers tosimply all the world contains.
Linguists say it refers to allinanimate objects such as stars,
(17:23):
mountains, rivers, seas, and allanimate objects, such as plants,
animals, angelic beings, and thehuman race.
Now that doesn't mean God didn'tset in motion the laws of nature
for joining in God's ultimateintention by procreating a child
or for plants and animals toproduce after their own kind.
(17:47):
What it does mean is thateverything that exists is the
result of God's divineforethought, intention, and
plan.
Listen to what Nehemiah said inhis own journal.
You alone are the Lord.
You made the heavens, the heavenof heavens, with all the starry
(18:09):
host, the earth and all that ison it, the seas and all that is
in them.
You give life to everything.
Nehemiah 9, verse 6.
This is exactly what Paul issaying.
Next he adds the exclamationpoint.
Notice that the Creator God isthe Lord of heaven and earth.
(18:30):
He's not subject to theuniverse.
He's not caught off guard bywhat happens in the universe.
It isn't too big for him tomanage.
He is Lord.
He is master of heaven andearth.
He is the creator behind thecosmos.
(18:51):
I love the story of CharlesBoyle, who was a devoted
Christian several centuries ago.
He was fascinated with Kepler'sand Newton's discoveries about
planetary motion and theintricate design.
Boyle hired a watchmaker todesign an actual working
mechanical model of the solarsystem that demonstrated the
(19:14):
motion of the planets around thesun.
They all moved mechanicallyaccording to the pattern of
their orbit.
It's quite marvelous.
An incredible display of skilland precision.
On one occasion, Boyle wasshowing the model to a man he'd
been praying for, an atheisticscientist.
(19:37):
And the atheist was extremelyimpressed with the clockwork
model.
And the atheist said, this iswhat Boyle was hoping for, the
atheist said, This is anincredible, impressive model.
Who made it?
And Boyle responded, Nobody.
It just appeared.
(19:58):
David, the psalmist, praised Godby writing, By the word of the
Lord the heavens were made, andby the breath of his mouth all
their host.
He gathers the waters of the seatogether in a heap.
He lays up the depths andstorehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of theworld stand in awe of him.
(20:19):
I love that.
For he spoke, and it was done.
Takes you back to Genesis 1.
And he said, and he said, and hesaid.
The plans of his heart, Davidwrites.
The plans of his heart.
From generation to generation.
Psalm 33, 6 to 10.
(20:40):
You know, David is singing aboutthe forethought and intention
and planning of our Creator God.
And I love the way David addsthat little line, when the world
comes to understand that, and byfaith believe it, all the world
stands in awe of God.
Isn't that what you do?
When you learn something, whenyou read some discovery, when
(21:02):
the archaeologist turns over hisspade, when when when you see
something, you know, on yourcomputer screen, when you look
at the photograph of the of theHubble who wasn't sent out there
by the way to defendChristianity, but when you see
those photographs, you stand inawe of God.
We find in Christ the Creatorthe object of our highest
(21:26):
praise.
We find in Christ the hope inour deepest valley.
We find in Christ the answer tolife's greatest mysteries.
Today our country is mired inthe latest theory that includes
the leap of faith proposed byCharles Darwin.
(21:47):
And by the way, it takes as muchfaith to believe that species
evolved into other specieswithout any evidence in the
fossil record as it took thefaith of the Athenians to
believe the human race was theresult of one of their gods
accidentally impregnating Earth.
And it takes faith to believethe propositional statement in
(22:10):
the beginning that God created.
And I say that to say this thequestion is not, do you have
faith?
The question is, to what haveyou pinned your faith?
In the 1800s, Darwin believedthe cell, the smallest unit of
life, was simply a lump ofcarbon.
(22:32):
Trouble is his theory was basedon what he couldn't see.
And he was honest enough toadmit it, by the way.
He wrote, and I quote, if it canbe demonstrated that any complex
organ existed, which could notpossibly have been formed by
numerous successivemodifications, my theory would
absolutely break down.
(22:53):
End quote.
That's exactly what happened.
Then with the invention of theelectron microscope in 1930, 48
years after the death of CharlesDarwin, mankind was finally able
to see a demonstration of thecomplexity within a single
living cell, and it was astaggering discovery.
(23:18):
Hidden from view all this time,locked inside the nucleus of a
cell, was this chemically coiledstrand that would later be named
DNA, which I'm glad it's calledDNA because I cannot pronounce
everything that that represents.
DNA.
Let me read just onedescription.
This has been, you know, celldiscovery day, I guess, this
(23:39):
morning and this evening.
But let me just read from onedescription something that
Darwin didn't know, that we knownow.
Once the egg and sperm sharetheir inheritance, the DNA
chemical ladder splits down thecenter of every gene like the
teeth of a zipper pull apart.
DNA reforms itself each time thecell divides, each cell having
(24:02):
the identical DNA.
Along the way, cells specializemysteriously.
Yet each cell carries the entireinstruction manual of 100,000
genes.
Your DNA contains instructionsthat, if written out, would fill
a thousand volumes, each volumesix hundred pages.
(24:25):
But here's what staggers myimagination in their discovery:
all of the information of theentire library are carried
within each cell.
No evolving, no adapting, butimmediately springing into
existence containing all theinformation.
(24:45):
The DNA is so compacted that allthe genes in your body's cells
could fit into an ice cube.
However, if the DNA were unwoundand joined together end to end,
the strand would stretch fromthe earth to the sun and back
again 400 times.
In other words, it has beendemonstrated that a complex
(25:06):
organ exists which could notpossibly have been formed by
numerous modifications.
So obviously the theorycollapsed and they've been
rewriting science textbooks overthe last few decades.
Not hardly.
They have dug in.
And you say, as I said tomyself, and then offer and
(25:28):
answer, if Darwin had only hadthe electron microscope, if only
he had had that, he didn't.
But you know what he had asermon by the Apostle Paul
delivered to the Areopagus.
And Charles Darwin would haveread this same chapter in the
(25:49):
book of Acts as he prepared atone point in his young adult
life to be a minister in theChurch of England.
But with what Darwin alreadyknew, he was already troubled by
the staggering cosmeticarrangement of the world.
Listen to something that is notin those textbooks.
He wrote a letter to a closefriend, which was published
(26:12):
after his death, and he wrote,and I quote, I am conscious that
I am in an utterly hopelessmuddle.
I cannot think that the world aswe see it is the result of
chance.
Again, I say I am and shall everremain in a hopeless muddle.
(26:35):
Paul effectively warns hisgeneration and ours, if you want
to muddle along, deny what is asobvious to us as four faces card
into a mountainside.
In Athens, in America, thedenials are commonplace, and
because of it, beloved, here'swhat we're dealing with in our
(26:58):
culture.
Mankind not only loses a divinedesigner, he loses a purpose and
design for his own life andmodels.
Along.
(27:29):
Every discovery points to him.
I came across this article, yetanother reason to stand in awe
of our Creator, and with this Iclose.
You may feel as if you'resitting still right now, but
it's an illusion of miraculousproportion.
(27:50):
Planet Earth is spinning aroundits axis at a speed of 1,000
miles per hour.
Every 24 hours, planet Earthpulls off a celestial 360.
We're also hurtling throughspace at an average velocity of
67,108 miles per hour.
(28:10):
That's not just faster than aspeeding bullet.
It is 87 times faster than thespeed of sound.
So even on a day when you feellike you didn't get much done,
don't forget that you actuallytraveled 1.5 million miles
through space.
But good.
(28:31):
And to top things off, while wespeed and spin along, our Milky
Way is spinning like a galacticpinwheel at the dizzying rate of
483,000 miles per hour.
That isn't miraculous.
This author said, I don't knowwhat is.
(28:52):
So, when was the last time youthanked God for keeping the
galaxy in orbit and the earthspinning on course?
I'm guessing you've neverprayed, Lord.
I wasn't sure we'd make the fullrotation today.
But you did it again.
Thank you.
(29:13):
And then his application, Markwrites, Mark Batterson writes,
if we can trust God to manageour universe and keep it in
perfect arrangement according tohis will, if we can trust God
for these big things, let'strust him for the little things,
like keeping our own lives oncourse according to his
(29:37):
intention, his forethought, andhis plan.
SPEAKER_00 (29:54):
Today's message is entitled In the Beginning.
This message is very important.
Not just for evangelism, but fora basic understanding of who God
is.
Because of that, we have itavailable in several ways.
If you'd like to share thismessage with others or listen to
it again, it's posted to ourwebsite.
(30:16):
Simply go to wisdomonline.organd you'll be able to listen.
And share the link of themessage with anyone you think
needs to hear it.
Our number once again is866-482-4253.
I'm Scott Wiley.
Thanks for joining us today.
Be with us next time for morewisdom for the heart.
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