Beginning with the most magnificent creation of God, the universe, most of us know that there is a definite pattern in it all. If it were not so, we would not know from one night to the next where the stars and planets would be. If it were not so, planets and stars would be crashing into each other constantly, and our own planet would have been short-lived. Who made the laws by which the movements of stars, planets, and our solar system are ruled?

Astronomers know that all the stars, solar systems, galaxies, and comets have a definite pattern of movement. “What supermathematician planned all this? The Bible asks:

God Himself asks:

Our solar system alone is a marvel of design. According to scientists, the nine planets that swing around our sun are at precisely the right distance from each other. Further, the planet on which we humans live is at exactly the right distance from the sun, so that it neither gets too hot nor too cold for us to live, as it does on the other planets. The Bible says that God set the sun and the moon in the firmament of heaven (Gen 1:17). The sun is constantly in movement, as is our planet. Yet we stay precisely the same comfortable distance from this source of life and light.

Even as we see the evidence of the existence of an intelligent, interested, and mighty God in the vastness of creation, so we see it in the little things all around us.

“Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?** God asked Job over 3,000 years ago. It has only been comparatively recently that man has been able to do just that, with the aid of a microscope. Scientists say that no two snowflakes are alike. Every one of the millions of snowflakes that have fallen, and will fall, are of a six-sided geometric design, yet no two are alike!

Science also has discovered within the last hundred years the multitudes of microbes, bacteria, and viruses that exist in our world, each tiny living thing the cause of some process that occurs. They have just recently discovered that the microscopic atom can be split, and tremendous power comes from such a splitting. It also has been verified that there is infinitely more space in solid-appearing objects than there is matter!

The earth and the multitude of blessings for man that it contains are testimonies to the creation of God. The climate of earth is ideal for the existence of man; in fact, scientists say that it appears to be the only planet in our solar system on which man and animals are able to live. The atmosphere and gravity of our planet are just right for man Plenty of water and sunlight are provided for him. God placed on earth all kinds of trees, plants, and flowers as well as animals and fish; these provide man with a wonderful variety of food, clothing, shelter, and beauty.

There are minerals and metals of every kind for man’s happiness and welfare: gold, silver, precious gems, iron, copper, brass, marble, aluminum, silica, coal, gas, oil, radium, and cobalt. God has even made the principle of electricity available to man, with all its related blessings and comforts. The earth with its storehouse of treasures did not “just happen,” any more than has one of our fabulous World’s Fairs. These fairs are the result of intelligent minds and much planning. So, too, the earth is the creation of the greatest intelligence of all: God.

A good part of the earth is covered by the sea, a sea filled with a multitude of miracles and treasures. It is a veritable storehouse of life, minerals, and food for mankind. “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep” (Ps 107:23-24).

Man has never yet solved all the grand mysteries of the great seas that God made. The currents, the tides, the evaporation, the life therein: all are in the sea by God’s command and creation, for the good of earth and man.

Consider also the unique and amazing compatability of every beast, reptile, fish, and bird with its environment. The Bible says:

There are thousands of species in each of these categories. There are animals which are well-fitted to thrive in the far north and those just as well-fitted to live in their environment near the equator. Fish and birds are similarly equipped. In addition, God has given every one of His creatures in these categories instincts that are absolutely necessary to their survival. Their species would never have continued to exist if they had not been so equipped from the very beginning.

Strange as it may seem, most of the sometimes repulsive and sometimes gorgeous insect species have been proved to be necessities in God’s balance of nature on earth. Many of them are absolutely indispensable for the fertilization of plants, trees, and flowers. Most provide a very necessary source of food for birds, and a number have their own little specialized tasks as well. Have you ever studied the perfect design on the backs of some insects or on the wings of butterflies and moths? These perfect designs had a master Designer.

Have you ever examined the intricate design in flowers and leaves? The petals of flowers come in many lovely shapes: smooth, broken, pointed, blunt, forked, cusped, or ragged. The formal florets of the dahlia, the feather pink, the star-shaped gilia, the bell-shaped lily, the trumpet-shaped petunia, and the three-point trillium have served as inspiration for mankind’s talented designers. Who equipped so many of these creations of beauty with their exquisite and individual fragrances? Was it not our God of love? Yes, God was the Originator of wonderful designs and delectable perfumes!

Man himself is a testimony to God. A unique creature in all the earth, man has the brainpower to create and invent a tremendous variety of necessities and conveniences for himself. Man’s body is a marvel of design, composed of at least 5,000 named anatomical parts. The Bible says: “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps 100:3).

Man still has not figured himself out, but he learns more all the time. He has learned, for instance, that many parts of himself that he used to consider useless do serve some very necessary function.

The Bible says that man was made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). We have, like God, a personality consisting of self-consciousness, intelligence, and free will. Man was also created a moral being with a conscience. Some have so quelled their consciences that they are no longer bothered by them. But after we have received Christ as our Saviour, we are more acutely aware of right and wrong than ever before.

The awesome beauty of God’s earth and heavens has caused many a man to think about the existence of God. The riotous color of a garden of flowers; the magnificence and spectacular blend of hues of mountains and canyons; the gorgeous magenta, lavender, and gold of a sunset; the miraculous appearance of a rainbow in the sky; the flash of red or blue on wing; the coloratura sparkling forth from a tiny mocking bird; the luxuriousness of a mink’s fur; the crashing of a powerful surf on a beach; the ripples of the water in sunlight; the quiet touching beauty of a fall moon; the sky full of stars; a cooing baby; a mother’s tender smile; a father’s gentle solicitude; a thousand things of beauty for eye, ear, and touch all say, “There is a God, a God who cares!” “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy-work” (Ps 19:1).

The Bible is rich in comparisons between the things of God’s creation and things in the spiritual realm.

The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is called the Lily of the Valley, the Rose of Sharon, the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the light, the life, the rock, and the bread of life. He came into the world as a tiny helpless baby in order to identify Himself with mankind; then He grew to boyhood and manhood without ever sinning, according to the Bible.

The Bible says, “The Word became flesh [Jesus Christ] and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). This was the only way God could bridge the gap that had been created between Himself and man by man’s disobedience and sin. Through the perfect obedience of one man, who was God Himself, the gap was bridged, and righteousness is imputed to all those who believe in Him and accept His sacrifice for their sins. Thus, basic to the plan of salvation was the incarnation of God in human flesh. He Himself, as He walked on this earth, used many illustrations from among the things of His own creation.

Jesus pointed to the lilies of the field, noting how beautifully they were clothed; He reminded His disciples that if God clothed the short-lived lilies so well, surely He would provide their clothing, without their having to worry about it. He pointed to the sparrows arid said that not one of them fell to the ground without God’s knowledge. He told His disciples that if one little sparrow meant so much to God, surely the welfare of His disciples meant infinitely more.

Jesus came to a fig tree, looking for fruit; There was nothing but leaves on the tree. It was condemned by Christ and died, a reminder through the ages that those who profess to be the Lord’s people should be bearing fruit. As they passed through a field of wheat, Jesus said to His disciples, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Then he added the spiritual application: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (Jn 12:24-25).

When Jesus met the woman at the well, her mind was on drinking water. He took the temporal thought in her mind and turned it into a spiritual application: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (Jn 4:13-14).

An important religious ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus came to see Jesus one night. When he could not understand the teaching concerning being born again of the Spirit of God, Jesus likened the new birth by the Spirit to “the wind [which] bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth” (Jn 3:8).

The people gathered around Jesus the day after He had fed 5,000 of them with a few loaves and fishes, asking a sign of Him that they might believe! They reminded Him how their forefathers had been given manna from heaven to eat in the desert. Jesus, having just the day before given them such a physical manifestation, gave them a spiritual application: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (Jn 6:35).

In a land full of vineyards, Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

Jesus healed the people of their many diseases and afflictions not only to ease their suffering, but also to teach things from the spiritual realm. When a paralyzed man was laid at His feet, Jesus first said to him, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee.” Then to prove to the Pharisees that He had the power to forgive the man’s sins, He told the man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house” (Mt 9:2-6).

When He healed a blind man He said, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind” (Jn 9:39). He was speaking at the time to the Pharisees who claimed they understood spiritual things. He used the cure of the blind man to illustrate how God gives spiritual sight and understanding to those who truly want them. Jesus illustrated spiritual truths with the weather, water, and wind; food, vegetation, and flowers; fish, birds, animals, and people; the sea, mountains, trees, and fields; precious stones, fire, soil, life, and death; and many other things in creation.

In the Old Testament, God’s prophets used physical and material things and demonstrations to get spiritual and prophetical messages across to their people. Moses and Aaron, by their awe-inspiring demonstrations in Egypt through God’s power, not only convinced their own people that they had been chosen to lead them out of Egypt and bondage, but also convinced the Egyptians of the mighty omnipotence of their God.

In Hosea’s case, he had to act out with his very life a telling rebuke to God’s people, reminding them of God’s love for them in spite of their unfaithfulness. Hosea was asked of God to marry a bad woman, and his children were given names symbolic of God’s dealing with His people. Lastly he was sent to buy back, to redeem, his unfaithful wife from the slave market where her sinful life had brought her.

The rituals and tabernacle that God gave to the Israelites in the wilderness, as well as the Passover time in Egypt, pictured beautifully the coming of God’s Passover Lamb in the flesh, Jesus Christ. The shedding of blood of sacrificial animals during the Passover and sacrificial rites were physical reminders to the Jews that “without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins}, (Heb 9:22). These were to have prepared them for the time when “the Lamb without spot and blemish” would shed His blood for the sins of the world on the cross.

In order to enter the tabernacle the Jew first had to pass by the sacrificial altar where blood sacrifice for sin was made. After that was a laver where hands and feet were washed, symbolizing how that after we receive Christ as our Saviour, we need to cleanse ourselves with the water of God’s Word. Then in the holy place were the shewbread, symbolic of Jesus, the bread of life and our Sustainer; and the lampstand, symbolic of Jesus our light.

In the Holiest of Holies stood the Mercy Seat, symbolic of God’s grace. Into this place the high priest entered but once a year to bring the blood offering for sin. When Christ was crucified on the cross, the veil between the holy place and the Holiest of Holies was split, thus symbolizing the free access and entrance of all to God’s grace and salvation through the blood of His Son.

There are many other places in the Bible where God uses the material to help us understand the spiritual.

Others of them will be used in the following chapters to illustrate the specific subject being considered. May these precious truths seen in His visible manifestations help you to have a keener understanding of our invisible Creator.

Order! Working as perfectly and orderly as an intricate watch, billions of planets, stars, and galaxies wheel and revolve through space perfectly without colliding. Astronomers gaze through their powerful telescopes at stars that sent out the light they are seeing thousands of years ago! Yet every night the same star is in a predictable spot in the universe. Every night the moon is in its place; every day the sun is where it ought to be. In over 3,000 years of astronomical observations, day and night on earth have continued faithfully and on schedule. This is God’s creation.

The supreme discovery of science is the orderliness of the universe—in everything from the atom to the galaxy. Astronaut John Glenn states that the orderliness of the vast universe about us is definite evidence that God put it all into orbit and keeps it that way. He said that it just could not be an accident. That is precisely what it all would be without a Creator.

Our little earth is just part of a solar system which is part of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. In this galaxy of ours alone there are a hundred billion stars! And there are over a billion more such galaxies in the universe! The vastness of the universe we live in is almost inconceivable to the human mind. Yet the spectroscope, by measuring light from many spiral nebulae and comparing it with our sun, has proved that the entire universe is one, made throughout of the same basic substances!

Our galaxy is not only shaped like a cartwheel, but also the whole gigaritic group of which it consists moves like a cartwheel. It is thought to be part of a cluster of galaxies, each galaxy in the group being millions of light years away from the others ! Our sun requires two million centuries just to make one circuit around our galaxy. Even within this galaxy the nearest star to earth (besides the sun) is an estimated 25 million of millions miles away. It would take a jet plane six million years to fly that distance.

The average star is a million times larger than our earth. Yet what appears to be one star to the naked eye may be several thousand stars clustered together! Although more than 1,500 million stars have been seen and photographed by astronomers, the heavens are actually far more filled with space than with stars. In fact, at least 99 percent of the universe is nothing but space!

All stars are true suns like our sun, but since the nearest neighboring star to our sun is 250 thousand times farther away from earth, “Old Sol” is the one that predominates in our sky. God gave us just the right sun too, for many stars are much more luminous than our sun and would quickly burn the earth to a crisp if they were as near as our sun. Neither are all stars as stable and steady as our sun, but some flare up and die down. Others fluctuate on longer cycles.

Our solar system may well be the only one in the universe, as there is no proof of any others, and most planetary bodies are either too hot or too cold to sustain life. In the solar system that revolves around our sun, there are nine planets; our earth is the third one from the sun. It is the ideal distance from the sun for the thriving of life, and the perfect size. The sun itself is 700 times more massive than the rest of the solar system combined and is thus able to exert the main gravitational pull on the other bodies in the group.

Gravitation is the force that governs the movements of everything in the universe. This law of nature was discovered by Newton less than 300 years ago. It is gravitation that keeps the planets revolving in orderly fashion around the sun. It makes of our earth a huge magnetic ball, thus holding us and everything else in its retentive protective grip. Who put the law of gravitation into effect in the entire universe? This phenomenon could scarcely have been an accident of nature!

Another thing that plays a factor in the orderly movement of the planets around the sun is that they orbit at just the right speed to continue in their constant movement and position in relation to the sun. Who put these in motion at just the right speed? Someone who is greater than the finest watchmaker in the world did it.

The sun provides us with heat, light, power, beneficial rays, and an orbital hub. Traveling through bitterest cold some 93 million miles, its heat arrives on earth at just the right temperature to warm us. Although its amazing solar engine room keeps putting out fantastic amounts of heat constantly, it has remained practically the same size and strength for the last 500 million years, according to geologists.* It is a self-regulating furnace made by the finest Craftsman that ever existed.

Without the sun all life would quickly disappear from the earth. Plants would not perform their photosynthetic processes, without which both they and animal life would die. For the sun is the source of all energy for life, working through the food chain which starts with green plants. The earth would also become a frozen waste.

The other planets in our solar system are either too far from the sun or too near to it to be actually comfortable for living. But not only would they be uncomfortably hot or cold, but also they apparently are hopelessly too hot or too cold. Further, as far as astronomers can tell, the atmosphere, the gravity, the orbit, or the lack of water on the other planets makes life on them an impossibility. God put life and man on the only planet in this solar system that could sustain them. And earth does that in a marvelous fashion.

The moons that revolve around the other planets are just as dead and lifeless as ours. Some of them revolve in one direction, some in another; yet the solar system works perfectly with no collisions of moons or planets.

If our moon were larger or closer to us, tides would continually wreck our harbors and submerge our coastal plains. If it were farther away and smaller, the tides would not be strong enough to cleanse our harbors or rejuvenate the waters of our oceans. The ocean breakers which are caused by the tides provide the life in the sea with oxygen by aerating the water. Thus our moon plays an integral part in life on our earth and was put near our earth by God in His infinite wisdom.

For untold centuries civilized men of Europe and Asia firmly believed the earth was flat and that if the ships sailed too far they would sail off the edge! But hundreds of years before Christ was born, a prophet spoke by inspiration of God and told of the true shape of the earth. Isaiah wrote:

Civilized Greeks and Romans also believed that the earth rested on the back of a huge turtle or some god. But the oldest book in the Bible was even then in complete accord with the findings of modern science: