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Wonders of Creation 49
Browse through your local library and you will probably find a few
books about poisonous animals and plants. Flick through the pages and see how
dangerous the world of living things can be. These plants and animals have
weapons of offense as well as defense, and most of them are fearfully
respected. Some of them bite, some sting. Others
squirt poison or simply hit you with something. The 'wonderful outdoors' is not
so wonderful if you come down with a disease or fall into a pool with
jellyfish, sharks and moray eels.
A builder friend of mine, working in
Despite appearances, the world is not always a safe place in which
to live. In fact, when you read the first chapter of Genesis, it sounds like
the Bible is completely wrong. “And God saw every thing that He had made, and
behold, it was very good.” How can a poisonous snake be “very good”? How can a
lion savagely dragging a zebra down and biting its neck be “very good”? Surely
there is some mistake?
Evolutionists say the world has always been the way it is. They say
that, for millions of years, animals have been biting and stinging, cutting and
clawing, poisoning and eating each other, and that this is all part of a normal
balance in the environment. There never was, they say, a time when life was
kind, and peaceful.
Some botanists have recently discovered that some plants are
killers of other plants. It has long been known that pine trees drop needles
which emit a gas as they decay, which kills other plants, but this seemed to be
accidental. Now we know there are deliberate killers on the
loose. The spotted knapweed for example, which has invaded the American West,
has a particularly nasty way of eliminating its opposition: it poisons them.
It may be that the plants and animals originally created by God
have changed since they were first formed? For example, the teeth of a
dinosaur, lined up like small points, could have been very useful for dragging
leaves off trees. A tiger's claws may have originally been used to climb trees
before they were used to kill prey. The poison in a snake's venom may have once
been used to predigest fruit or some other food. The spines of a cactus may
have appeared only after the world's climate changed. A spider's web may have
originally been used to catch pollen. It is only the evolutionary assumptions
which make us see Nature as normally 'red in tooth and claw'. The Bible says
the only diet first life had was vegetarian.
Despite the bad press for the knapweed, there are plenty of plants
that use chemicals for benign purposes. Sometimes they release chemicals called
perfumes, which delight our senses with fragrances and beauty beyond words.
Some trees communicate by releasing chemicals so other trees can prepare
themselves for some danger, such as a spreading disease. Lima beans are
particularly clever at communicating – when they are attacked by spider mites
they send out a chemical signal which attracts carnivorous mites which eat the
spider mites. The signal also alerts other lima bean plants to release the same
chemical so they are prepared.
The world is not normal. Conditions in the world of Nature are not
the way they were originally designed, some 6000 years ago in Creation week, neither will the prevailing conditions continue
indefinitely.
God promises in His Word that one day He will restore this
degraded planet and fill it with the perfection it once had. Of the whole
animal and plant kingdom He says:
“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.” Isaiah 11:9 In other words, the Earth will be flooded,
as it was in the days of Noah, with goodness and peace and love.
“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat
straw like the bullock . . . they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” Isaiah 65:25
“Truly I say to you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the
vine, until the day when I drink it new in the