A Natural Revelation Revolution
By Richard C. Kern
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Photography by Richard S. Kern

Until recent centuries, man lacked the instrumentation to pin down hard facts about the natural world. We got it wrong on so many counts. For example, while observing the stars it seemed that everything was orbiting around us. This made sense if man was the culmination of God’s creation. Why wouldn’t we be at the center? We know now, of course, that we are not at the center of our solar system, galaxy, or universe. Thank you, Copernicus. Thank you, James Webb Space Telescope.

Yet the designs in nature, the strength of nature’s forces, and the beauty of nature’s objects are so substantial that we are told in Romans 1:20 that we are “without excuse” if we don’t see the hand of a Creator in these things and affirm His “eternal power and divine nature.”

In his book “Witness,” we read that Whittaker Chambers, an American journalist and Soviet spy during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, was converted from atheism to Christianity one candlelit evening while focusing on the delicate contours of his daughter’s ear. If “the heavens declare the glory of God,” we must assume that if we do not see this glory, we are biased against it. This is the unfortunate state of natural, unregenerate man, as Romans explains.

Revelation Is Evidence of God’s Love

God loves us so much that He has offered proof upon proof of His presence. The crucial points are in the special revelation of His Son through Holy Scripture. Taken together, the Old and New Testaments give us fulfilled prophesy, eyewitness accounts, and miracles that make faith not a leap but a reasonable conclusion. In the Bible, God reveals the particulars of His relationship to us. His salvation through Christ is His matchless gift. What is written is written, but we have mined the words of Scripture for their exact meaning for 2,000 years. Councils have sometimes haggled over them. The Bible is indispensable.

We will never discover all that could be discovered, if we have understood God correctly. Even so, our knowledge of God’s greatness is expanding exponentially in the present age.

I heard a scientist interviewed on the radio not long ago. He was asked what he thought the most amazing object in the universe might be. My mind jumped to things like the Crab Nebula, but the expert didn’t hesitate. “It is the human brain,” he exclaimed. Why didn’t I think of it? I had been reading about the brain while studying early childhood development: the billions of neurons, the trillions of synapses, the refining or “pruning” of those synapses during adolescence. It is revealing that neuroscientists are still mystified as to exactly how memories are biochemically stored in brain tissue. The human eye is a fantastic marvel of design, but the brain is a deep mystery.

Another gigantic mystery is why our brain is so big. Animals hunt, gather, build nests, and reproduce with much smaller brains than we have, but we are quite sure that no other creature can ask questions such as “Does God exist?” It is tempting to suppose, and I think we should, that we have large brains so we can know God. This is startling, but is there more?

A possible symmetry has ap­­­peared: Abraham, father of the Hebrew nation, is called into covenant with God 2,000 years before Christ. Two thousand years after Christ there is an explosion of scientific knowledge that reveals the natural world’s heretofore undiscovered complexity. One might say that natural revelation is having its day. God gave us the brains to make this happen. God gave us the brains to understand it. God wants us to know that He is amazing. He is revealing this now.

Lest we get down on the great disservice Darwinian (materialistic) evolutionary theory has done to modern thinking and reject science in the process, let’s focus for a minute on what we Christians have gained in this explosive exploration of the natural world through science and technology. Many Christians have participated in it. Science, after all, is a rational method of asking questions and then employing experiments, often using sophisticated instruments, to help gain answers. I like the fact that when science is wrong, other scientists usually pounce on the chance to show it. Truth is a heat-seeking missile. But it can take time to dismantle a false paradigm.

Science Reveals the Greatness of God

Astrophysics is a field that has knocked us over with information about the size of the universe. Try this: A beam of light traveling 186,000 miles per second since the time of Christ until now would traverse only one-fiftieth the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe, separated from each other by vast amounts of space. Everything we learn from astrophysics impresses upon us the greatness of the Creator.

Does it bother you that Earth is a planet in an ordinary solar system stuck partway out one ordinary arm of our spiral galaxy? It is now understood that in the quiet place we inhabit, there is so little background radiation from nearby stars that we are able to gaze into a dark sky. We can observe a universe that could never have been seen from the dense cluster of stars and solar systems in the central hub of the Milky Way or even from a typical location in a radial arm. God gave us an ideal place from which to observe space and to make discoveries.

The corona of solar energy and flares surrounding the sun has been successfully studied only because the disc of the moon masks all but the sun’s corona during a solar eclipse. Though the sun is much larger than our moon, their sizes appear exactly the same from where we stand during an eclipse. The blinding light of the sun’s disc is covered completely and perfectly so that the chemistry and physics of the corona can be studied — no accident, I would think.

God gave Noah the rainbow as a sign. Physically, this is what happens: When the great mix of elements in the sun are heated to fantastically high temperatures, the electrons in the outer shells of their atoms jump out of their orbits to higher energy levels. When those electrons pop back to their normal positions, photons of colored light of precise frequencies are emitted. Hydrogen, for example, emits narrow bands in the purple, dark blue, light blue, and red portions of the spectrum, whereas iron, which has far more electrons, emits a larger array of bands throughout many parts of the spectrum. With all the naturally occurring elements on the sun, each emitting its own pattern of color bands, there is a very full spectrum radiating toward us. Mixed together, we see this as white light, but when this is refracted by water drops in the air, a spectrum of color, a rainbow, is seen. We are bedazzled.

Light from distant stars when passed through the prism in a spectroscope helps us understand the chemical composition of stars old and new. One cannot help but see intentionality behind the amazing properties of light implicit in the periodic table of the elements. It is awesome to the mind of all who understand it and beautiful to the eye of all who see it on display.

Today we probe the far reaches of the universe as well as the components of the atom. We pass from the measurable to the theoretical. Who is to say there aren’t entire worlds beyond all that? Parallel universes perhaps. We have conceived of dark matter — not that we have a sample of it but that our mathematics, based on gravitational effects, say it must be there. We are, of course, dealing with expressions of God’s eternal power and divine nature. We will never discover all that could be discovered, if we have understood God correctly. Even so, our knowledge of God’s greatness is expanding exponentially in the present age.

In his book “Why the Universe Is the Way It Is,” well-known astrophysicist Hugh Ross speaks of the “fine-tuning” of our universe for life on Earth. To Ross and others, the universe and the natural laws that govern its behavior are set at precise levels which if adjusted ever-so-slightly up or down would make life impossible. The list, which grows as new discoveries pile up, includes: Earth’s distance to the sun, Earth’s gravitational force, the color temperature, stability and intensity of sunlight, the velocity of light, the level of oxygen in our atmosphere, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the expansion rate of the universe, and hundreds more. That so many precise and necessary factors could all occur together is beyond the reach of chance, prompting Ross to conclude “Such mounting evidence for fine-tuning shouts loudly that life must be more than a cosmic accident.”

New instruments and techniques in the field of cellular biology have opened living worlds to us as well. The complexity of the cell is so remarkable that in an earlier article I called it a “proof of God.” That discussion revolved around the origin of the informational compounds in the production of proteins through the DNA/RNA translational system. This remains powerful evidence that the cell, that tiniest packet of life, could not have evolved apart from a creator. Indeed, the entire field of biology is full of unexplained mysteries when one speaks of origins. We should not assume that materialistic evolution (evolution apart from God) as a theory has in any way been proved. This is important to know.

Dating artifacts by radiometric methods utilizing isotopes of carbon and uranium is sometimes seen as suspect within Christian circles. I will remind the reader that it was radioactive carbon dating that confirmed that the Great Isaiah Scroll, found among the other Dead Sea Scrolls, was copied down more than 100 years before Christ. That has been the most thrilling piece of archaeological news in my lifetime, and I hold it as true that Isaiah 53 is a spectacular miracle of prophesy.

Resources Abound

Many books from biologists and physicists as well as those scientists in the intelligent design field are excellent resources. Films from Illustra Media are also highly informative, with titles such as “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” and “The Privileged Planet.” These can be helpful for people with some knowledge of science. Young students will be taught that the universe is replete with the evidence of design. Every bit of this evidence is there for us to see through scientific learning. If we reject science, we miss the chance to see it and to be amazed in new ways by God’s creativity and power.

Take for example the process of complete metamorphosis in butterflies and moths, brought to light in a documentary by Illustra Media. During its life cycle, a caterpillar changes into a resting stage called a chrysalis (pupa in the case of the moth). At this time, the animal is transformed from an actively feeding, asexual larva with chewing mouthparts and no wings, into an adult with wings, sex organs, and a long proboscis for sipping. The two forms of the animal could hardly be more different.

What happens inside the exoskeleton of the chrysalis is beyond imagining. A game of musical chairs takes place as cells rearrange themselves into a new set of structures and a new way of life. All this takes place while the organism continues to respire and live. It is a suitable proverb for the changed life that the Christian experiences through Christ.

The Problem of Complex Design

But here is another point to ponder. How could this biological process have evolved through gradual Darwinian changes over great reaches of time? Can DNA mutation and natural selection solve design problems this complex? Remember how vulnerable the butterfly is during the days of its quiet transformation. You either have a resting stage when all this magnificent change takes place, or you don’t.

Or consider this: Can the flight of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls be arrived at through gradual transformation of body parts into other parts designed for flying without a predesign in mind? These kinds of problems are rife through the field of paleontology. They beg the question of how complex design issues can be solved. Could God be speaking to us through common sense?

The Creator may be expecting us to sometimes ask, “Is this reasonable?” For me, extreme examples of this kind stand as proofs of a designer. At the very least, we must take note of the huge number of such examples (not possible to list here) that create a preponderance of evidence for design. For those who see it, the natural revelation is becoming powerful evidence that speaks to us in a new and sophisticated way about complexity, design, and God.

The sophistication of science today may make it difficult for the evidence to be presented to the layman or in Sunday school. We must try. It can be done. Our youth will be impressed that we are thinking about our faith in new ways. I can testify that for many years, when stumbling blocks and doubts about my faith have struck me, I have always gone back through my trove of evidence. I think about Isaiah 53. I think about Lazarus and the woman at the well and the man born blind. I think about the certainty of the Gospel writers and of the martyrs who gave their lives for the truth. I also think about the size of the universe and the marvel of the cell. I think about the mystery of metamorphosis, of bird flight, and especially about the mystery of the brain. I arrive at a point when I can go on and feel good that I have chosen the path of faith. I arrive at a point when I can again feel confident living the life of faith.


Richard C. Kern is a ruling elder at Pinelands Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Miami. He has traveled the world producing natural history films and presenting them throughout the United States, especially to Miami public school students.

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