If there is no intelligence or design behind our earth and life, these evolutionists must admit that blind, dumb nature is more intelligent than they are. Now don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, friends. All scientists are not atheists by any means. In fact, in true science there is profound recognition of God as Creator. Among the 15,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, you can scarcely find a man who confesses himself an atheist. A group of the most emminent of them, headed by Dr. Millikan who obtained fame long before he isolated the atom, recently sent forth a signed statement declaring in no uncertain terms their faith and belief in God the Creator.

It’s a mistake to think that true science is essentially atheistic. It’s actually the opposite. But there is a science, falsely so-called, which does deny any divine act of creation. Just remember friends, there are errors in some scientific thought. In fact, the opinions of scientists change very rapidly. It is reported that the Library of the Louvre in Paris contains three and one-half miles of bookshelves holding volumes of science that have become obsolete in fifty years. The listener may recall that famous list of 51 scientific facts published by the French Academy of Science back in 1861, all of which supposedly contradicted some statement of Scripture. Those few score years have gone by and not one word of the Bible has been changed. In those same few score years the knowledge of science has so vastly increased that there’s not a living man of science today who holds one of those 51 so-called facts that were at one time advanced to refute the inspiration of the Bible.

If all the crops of all the world were gathered into one central storehouse and the whole human race were put on starvation rations—just enough to keep them alive—every edible thing would be consumed within eighteen months. If in that time God withheld the rain and obscured the sun or flooded all the fields, life would perish from the face of the earth. We talk about man being far away from God—the whole world must stay close to Him, and the farthest away we can get is a year and a half!

Now let’s look at something interesting here in the Bible. Did you know that these great facts of nature were all known and understood long before the scientists and naturalists discovered them? Ecclesiastes 1:7 tells us, “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. . . .” Think now friends, why isn’t the sea full after all the waters run back into it? The text continues and gives the answer. “Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” The Bible says the reason the ocean does not overflow is that the water is taken up again and returned to where the rivers come from. There is a constant movement of water going up from the ocean in vapor form, carried by the clouds over the dry land, being brought down again through the waters of the rivers into the waters of the oceans. So here it is in the Bible—scientific knowledge that men could have discovered for themselves just by reading the Scriptures. Yet the great naturalists felt they had made some new discovery when they found out about the cycle of water and clouds.

Let’s look at another Bible text, Job 26:8. “He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.” This is a beautiful text. Millions of tons of water are taken up from the oceans into the clouds, and yet the clouds don’t break and spill it all at one time. That’s what Job said, and of course, he was correct. We’ve just found that God has a process of gradual cooling which releases the water little by little as it’s needed to irrigate the surface of the earth. The cloud doesn’t just break open and spill all of it at once. It if did, we would have three feet of water all over the face of the earth. But Job knew this long before man figured it out. He said the clouds receive the water and just hold it there until it’s needed and then releases it in gentle rain.

I think all of us know that water has weight. In fact, its pressure is increased tremendously as we go down deeper and deeper into the ocean. Certain fish are living down in the very bottom of the ocean who are especially engineered by God to withstand the tremendous pressure. If these fish were brought up quickly from the ocean depths to the surface, they would explode from the inside pressure which God put into their muscular structure.

This is a wonderful fact, but do you realize that we also live in the bottom of an atmospheric sea that also has tremendous weight? At sea level we are living down in the bottom of a very, very dense, heavy covering. Just as the ocean is around the fish, so the atmosphere is around us. Every moment we live, there is 14 pounds per square inch exerted upon our body structure. Now that’s pretty heavy. We think a man is strong if he can lift 200 pounds on his back, and the strongest man that ever lived put only 415 pounds over his head. Yet friends, every single form of life on this earth, including the frail 90 lb. ladies as well as the strongest men, has a constant pressure of more than 14 tons at sea level pushing in and pressing in on him from every direction.

From the filmy, gauzy insects right on up to man and the largest animals, all have been designed by God to withstand this terrific pressure. That little insect, so light and frail it seems anything could crush it, has been built by God to withstand this awful pressure. Can you think this happened by accident? Could this incredible circumstance come about by mere chance? Look at Job 28:25. “To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.” The Bible says the wind has weight. The air is heavy, in other words. You climb up a mountain, and the higher up you go where the atmosphere becomes thinner, the more distressed and uncomfortable you become. Why? Because the pressure is not as great on the outside. Yet God has built in a certain amount of inside pressure to balance that which is on the outside at sea level. As you get higher and higher the outside pressure becomes less and less and there’s discomfort. If you went high enough, you would be torn apart just like the fish that was brought up from the depths of the sea. God has compensated by engineering the human body and the bodies of all other living creatures so they are able to endure the pressure and be comfortable in the process.

Now let’s consider another even greater miracle. The atmosphere around us is made up of two main ingredients—nitrogen and oxygen. But notice, the mixture of these two elements is always exactly in the same proportion wherever you find it—on top of the highest mountain or down in the bottom of the deepest cave. The air around us is mixed in a perfect proportion of 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. It never varies. You ask, “Why is it made like that? Is there some particular reason? Is it important that we have this exact mixture of nitrogen and oxygen?” I want to assure you that it is VERY important. If the nitrogen were increased in the air about us, our life processes would slow down and we’d soon die. If the oxygen were measurably increased, life processes would be rapidly increased also. But God made it just right. Suppose for example that it was 50% nitrogen and 25% oxygen. If that were the case and an electrical reaction caused the elements to combine, do you realize that the whole world would be turned into laughing maniacs? Everybody would be laughing, because that would produce the same laughing gas, N20, that the dentist uses sometimes when extracting teeth. Suppose it was a 50-50 mixture. That would produce nitric oxide, which would be fatal very quickly to all forms of life.

Was it just a lucky accident, friends, that it happened to come out like it did? Did some blind power of nature just happen to produce the exact mixture needed for mankind to live with pleasantly? Or was there some intelligent design in all of it? This world would simply be a chaos if the smallest accident happened in nature. Should this atmospheric mixture slip out of control for just a single instant, we would see one of the most tremendous explosions, because nitrogen is the basic component of gunpowder, and oxygen, of course, makes for rapid combustion. Just think what would happen if you got nitrogen and oxygen in the wrong proportions and the wrong chemical reaction took place. You could just say, “Goodbye, world.” And yet some day, apparently, there will be such an explosion. The Bible says the elements are going to melt with fervent heat. II Peter 3:12 tells us about it. I don’t know how God will arrange that, but I do know that some great fire, one of these days, is going to burn, and the earth will be purified by this strange fire of God. The elements will be involved in it because the elements are going to melt. Maybe God will change just ever so slightly the present proportion of nitrogen and oxygen, thus causing this great conflagration to take place. I do know this—we must be ready for that day when it comes. The Bible indicates that it is near at hand.