Nearly all of us are guilty of this and I probably am more than most people. I am a great eye surgeon, have been very successful, and have accomplished a lot of different things in my life. It would be easy for me to think that I am responsible for my success and am in charge of my life. That I am something special. Wrong. As a Christian, I know all that I have done and the talents that I have are a gift given to me by God.
Luke 12:48 NLT
When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.
I need to use my talents in a manner that is pleasing to God. You know, we fail to take the time to really understand who God is and how great he is. We don’t think about how powerful, glorious, omnipotent, majestic, and awesome he is. R.T. Kendall said, “If we could see how much the Lord loves us—and truly feel it—none of us would be the same.”
We tend to see him as up in heaven somewhere and we are here on Earth doing our thing. We seldom think about how breathtaking and brilliant God is. If we were better able to understand the extent of his glory and majesty, we would be worshiping him all day every day. We would be so in awe of him that all we would want to do is praise and worship him. Isaiah 40 talks about the power of God:
Isaiah 40:12,15,26 NLT
Who else has held the oceans in his hand? Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers? Who else knows the weight of the earth or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale?
He picks up the whole earth as though it was a grain of sand. Look up to the heavens. Who created the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.
God’s greatness and phenomenal power may be beyond our understanding, but by observation and study, we can gain a deeper understanding and perception of our God and creator. One way is to take time, stop our hectic lives, and look, listen, and observe God’s creation. If we did that consistently, it would change everyone’s perspective on living a life centered on God.
Scenic View
Psalm 77:11-12 MSG
Once again I’ll go over what God has done, lay out on a table the ancient wonders; I’ll ponder all the things you’ve accomplished, and give a long, loving look at your acts.
We need to stop on our journey through life and take what I call a scenic view. If you had never seen the sun, you would be impressed with a light bulb. If you had never seen a rainbow, you would be impressed with Crayola crayons. If you have never listened to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, you would be impressed with rap music. If you have never seen the greatness and majesty of God, you will live in a world of shadows and darkness. It will blow your mind if you seriously look into this world and universe.
The design and intricacy of how God meticulously made everything are amazing. You will find God’s fingerprints or signatures everywhere if you take the time to look.
Romans 1:20-21 NLT
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.
The Bible tells us that we can see God is his creation if we look for him. If we look we can see God’s hand in his creation, and just maybe he left some fingerprints around to help us identify him. Just like an artist whose style of painting is easily recognized—you know artists always sign their painting. Right, so maybe we can find God’s signature. Let’s start at the beginning.
Genesis 1:1 NLT
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That’s pretty straightforward, but let’s take a look at how vast and encompassing the universe really is. God spoke into creation the whole universe.
God of the Big Bang
Many people call it the Big Bang. Suddenly matter existed where there was total emptiness before. If there was nothing and suddenly there is something, who created that something from nothing? The answer is a divine designer or God is responsible for the Big Bang. Something cannot be created from a vastness of nothing on its own. Someone or some entity had to bring matter into existence.
Psalm 33:6 NLV
The heavens were made by the Word of the Lord. All the stars were made by the breath of His mouth.
Think about it: God is a star breather and galaxy former. He can form stars that are thousands of degrees in temperature. He is so powerful that thousands of degrees mean nothing to him. He is the designer, architect, and builder of the universe.
The Big Bang and the Size of the Universe
How precise did the Big Bang have to be for the universe to form? The explosive force of the Big Bang and the gravity to match that force had to be one part in 10 to the 60, or the universe would not exist. Any less and the universe would implode back on itself; any more and it would explode outward. Now that is a lot of zeros. God was freakishly precise in his creation and design. There is no way it could have happened by chance. There is no evidence of trials and errors for other attempts at creation. It was perfect the first time. The odds are just too great.
The universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter. A light-year is 5.88 trillion miles long. That makes the universe nearly 6 x 10 to the 23rdmiles across. Another unreal number that God just spoke into being. Insane, right? That God just spoke the universe into existence.
There are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. The number of stars in the universe is in the order of 1 with 24 zeros after it. As my neuro-ophthalmology professor used to say, that’s phantasmagorical. Let’s take a look at some of the bigger things in the universe and make some comparisons to give you an idea of the absolute gargantuan size of God’s creation.
Here is a view of a portion of the Milky Way from Earth.
The Milky Way where Earth is located is a spiral galaxy about 100,000 light-years across. That is 5.88 trillion miles times 100,000. There are approximately 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. Our sun and solar system are specks in the Milky Way.
Our sun is only a moderate-sized star in the universe. It is nearly 1 million miles in diameter compared to the Earth’s diameter of nearly 8,000 miles. The Sun is located 93 million miles from Earth. Can you spot where you live in that photo?
Canis Majoris is the largest known star in the universe. It is a red hypergiant star. The radius of Canis Majoris is 1,500 times that of our Sun. There on the left, you have trouble seeing our Sun next to this star. If you look to the right, the dotted line is the diameter of Earth’s orbit around our Sun. Even Earth’s orbit around our Sun is very small compared to just the size of Canis Majoris. God created things in the universe that are so massive it is hard to imagine how big they are. How powerful is God that, with a spoken word, he can create something humongous and 40,000 degrees hot? He just breathed out this huge, burning star in a single breath. Unbelievable!
Here you can see a tiny portion of the universe and the vastness of it. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 24 trillion miles away. It would take the Deep Space 1 probe 81,000 years to reach it. If we could shrink the Earth to the size of a grape, the nearest star would be 24,000 miles away. The universe is so vast it is beyond amazing—it’s unimaginable. In all these 2 trillion galaxies, there is a special galaxy called the Whirlpool Galaxy.
The Whirlpool Galaxy is one of the more beautiful galaxies in the universe. It is 31 million light-years away. It is 60,000 light-years in diameter. It has approximately 300 billion stars. This particular galaxy is a little different as it happens to have a black hole in the middle of it.
Amazing, right? Is this just a coincidence, or does God leave behind fingerprints for us to find? Does he put little symbols of his presence in his creation? Can we truly see God in his creation? Remember, Romans 1:20 says that people can see in the earth and sky God’s eternal power and nature. Or, as a painter, his brush strokes can be seen. Maybe he leaves some fingerprints behind for us to see for us to understand who he is.
I think you can see in the earth and the sky God’s nature, power, and hand in his creation, but how about other ways of seeing God in his creation that are just as fantastic and incredible?
Job 12:7-10 MSG
But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you; let the birds tell you what’s going on. Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics. Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories. Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree that God is sovereign, that he holds all things in his hand—Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature?
In nature, what can we see about God’s creative design? When taking a scenic view of the world around us, what can we find? Let’s take a look at some incredible creatures in nature.
Have you watched a spider weave its web? You would think it had graduated from an architectural school with such intricacy and design. How can a spider with a brain the size of a grain of sand build something accurate and beautiful? Could you or I take a piece of string and build a web that precisely? Probably not. God gave spiders a unique ability to live their lives.
Does anyone know what this is? This was built by a male Japanese pufferfish. The male Japanese pufferfish makes this beautiful symmetrical nest on the bottom of the ocean to attract a female pufferfish to lay her eggs in his special place. Again, how could a little fish wiggle its body and fins to furrow out the sand on the ocean floor in such perfect symmetry? God gave this little fish a special ability well beyond what you could explain by the brain capacity of this little fish.
Here is a photo of that little fish that made that beautiful area on the ocean floor.
Does anyone know what this is? This was built by a male Japanese pufferfish. The male Japanese pufferfish makes this beautiful symmetrical nest on the bottom of the ocean to attract a female pufferfish to lay her eggs in his special place. Again, how could a little fish wiggle its body and fins to furrow out the sand on the ocean floor in such perfect symmetry? God gave this little fish a special ability well beyond what you could explain by the brain capacity of this little fish.
The grouper pulls up to that special place in the reef, opens its mouth wide, spreads its gills open, and remains motionless. Suddenly, several beautiful cleaner shrimp swim out to the grouper. They have these clear-shell external bodies with white dots on them. Their organs are bright blue and red. They swim right into the grouper’s mouth and through its gills as they pick and clean parasites off the grouper. Multicolored cleaner wrasse fish swim out as well and do the same thing. They swim and crawl all through the grouper’s mouth and gills. They also clean any parasites off the outside of the grouper. Just as suddenly as they appear, they swim back to the reef and disappear. Even though these shrimp and small fish are delicious, the grouper never eats these tasty morsels. How does it know which shrimp and fish are on the menu and which are there to clean?
It’s amazing how intricately God has put everything in perfect harmony in his creation.
As Job says, let the fish tell you about God.
Birds
The miracle of the swallows of Capistrano takes place every year at Mission San Juan Capistrano on March 19th. The swallows migrate between Argentina and California. How is it possible for these birds to fly a 15,000-mile round trip from California and Argentina to arrive on the very same day every year at exactly the same location in California? These birds have tiny little brains but can complete the journey every year perfectly. You and I have trouble finding our way around using a GPS navigation system. The birds of Capistrano are another amazing design by God.
I started by talking about how large the universe that God created is. Canis Majoris is so large that it dwarfs our sun. The size of the universe, the billions of galaxies, and the trillions of stars present are mind-boggling. It’s impossible to wrap our minds around it. Then you look at the meticulous design of nature and how little animals can perform tremendous, complex, and beautiful accomplishments. How can birds fly 15,000 miles and end back in the same place on the same day every year? It is impossible to conceive or make this stuff up. Right!
Now. Let’s go from humongous-sized stars and unbelievable creatures in nature to the smallest things in the world. At least things that we know of. God not only formed these extremely large things in the universe, but he made everything from extremely small things in order to make the large things.
Fundamental Particles
The smallest known things in the universe are called fundamental particles or elementary particles. Now we are going from stars that are larger than we can imagine to particles so small we don’t have any microscope strong enough to see them. We aren’t even sure what they are made of. Some of them are called quarks, leptons, and there is even antimatter.
Remember Antimatter from Star Trek, which was the center of the power for the spaceship? Well, antimatter does exist. These tiny particles are many times smaller than the atoms, protons, and neutrons you learned about in school. A quark is 43 million times smaller than a grain of sand. It takes millions of water molecules to make the smallest snowflake. Surreal. Again, that is a lot of zeros in the other direction for how small something is. Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory TV show always talks about string theory. String theory proposes that tiny strings or filaments smaller than quarks are the basis for the structure behind the universe. Who knows what the limits are as to how small God started when he made the world?
God’s creation is pretty impressive as it starts with something so small that it has a long row of zeros indicating how small it is compared to the size of the universe, which is 93 million light-years in diameter.
God started with the smallest thing in the universe and built on top of them the whole structure of the universe, with all its laws of physics and its divine interconnectivity. Who could accomplish this daunting task? How could it be possible? Only an all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipotent God would be capable.
Man
Genesis 2:7 NLT
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground. He breathed life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Adam is the Hebrew word for man and means “red”. Man was made from the red clay of the earth. Our bodies are made up of a bunch of minerals, chemicals, and water. The body contains 75 million cells. Man’s DNA is composed of only four nucleotides or proteins. With just those four proteins, man’s DNA code contains 3 billion characters.
If you printed out your DNA, the paper would stack up to the height of the Washington Monument. You can store 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA. You can store the entire Library of Congress in only 10 terabytes. Your DNA sits inside each tiny cell. If you unraveled the DNA from a single cell in your body, it would be six feet long. How can a strand of DNA be six feet long inside one tiny cell? If you unraveled the DNA in your body, it would reach the moon and back. Wow! That’s amazing, right? How about if I told you it would actually do that 178,000 times? Now that is a wow. Though you don’t feel it or realize it, your body is hard at work, as 50,000 cells die every 3 seconds in your body and you are making 50,000 new cells every 3 seconds of the day. You probably didn’t know you were working that hard just to maintain yourself and stay alive.
There are 1.5 million nerve fibers in the optic nerve that takes the signal from the retina and sends it to the vision center called the occipital lobe in the back of the brain. These 1.5 million nerves in the optic nerve have to align themselves to match the visual pathway of the vision center in the brain. One and one-half million nerves have to meet their counterpart in the brain in order for you to see. What are the odds that 1.5 million nerves in the optic nerve would match its counterpart in the brain 100% of the time so that you can see? The vision system in itself is an amazing miracle.
You know God could have made the world in black and white, but he used brilliant colors to design his creation. Many of the animals he created use color as a way of living their lives—things such as camouflage for protection and colors for mating. God gave us color vision so we could fully enjoy this world. Did you know that the human eye can see 7 million colors? It wouldn’t know by how men dress, would you? One brown sock and one blue sock.
1 Corinthians 2:16 NLT
For, “Who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.
The New Testament word for mind is nous—understanding, reason, the reasoning faculty, intellect, knowledge, and reflective thinking.
We are made in God’s image in that God gave us a brain that is capable of thinking, reasoning, planning, cogitating, and making rational decisions. God is a spirit and does not have a physical body like ours. We are like God in that we have a mind, spirit, and soul.
Brain
There are many similarities in the brain and central nervous system in the animals that God created. The spinal cord sends and receives signals from the brain and body, and this is similar in all animals. The brain stem is responsible for basic living functions such as breathing, heart rate, digestion, and other baseline body functions. This is similar in all animals. The next level up in the central nervous system is the limbic system which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, fear, anger, rage, aggression, and other emotions. This area of the brain is similar in all animals as well. The cerebral cortex is what makes humans different from all others of God’s creation. It is responsible for our ability to think, reason, plan, contemplate, and know right from wrong.
The human brain is an unbelievable organ that God created. God gave us the ability to understand the world he placed us in and to understand who he is so that we can be connected to him and worship him. Here are a few interesting facts about the brain.
Looking Inside Your Brain
- The brain is the size of a cantaloupe.
- Sixty percent (60%) of the brain is fat or lipid.
- There are 1,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain.
- Twenty percent (20%) of the body’s oxygen consumption is made by the brain.
- It generates up to 25 watts of power.
- It holds 100 terabytes of information.
- It can make one hundred trillion calculations per second.
- There are 100 billion brain cells or neurons.
- 30,000 brain cells could fit on the head of a pin.
- Neurons transmit their information at a speed of 100 yards a second.
- There are 100 trillion connections in the brain.
- If you unraveled just the DNA in the brain, it would stretch to the sun and halfway back to Earth.
The brain that God created is an astonishing achievement.
Genesis 2:7 NLT
He breathed life into his nostrils and the man became a living being.
The Hebrew word for breathed is chay. In almost all instances in the Bible when this word is used, it is used in a plural meaning. I believe that God breathed into man a spirit and a soul.
I believe that God instilled into your central nervous system your spirit and soul. Now the Holy Spirit may occupy your whole body, but any communication or relationship is going to occur in your brain or mind. God designed your brain so that he could have a relationship with you and communicate with you. Once you are a Christian, your spirit is in communication with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is actually firing neurons in your brain so that you can sense the thoughts the Holy Spirit wants you to know. You can actually see brain cells firing when you are meditating and worshiping God.
This is a scan of an atheist. On the left is a baseline scan where they are not thinking about anything during the scan. During the scan on the right, they are asked to meditate on the concept of a God or the possibility of a God. You can see no difference between the baseline and a scan during meditation. The brain did not change.
This is the brain of a Christian. On the left is the baseline where they are not asked to do anything during the scan. During the scan on the right, they are asked to pray and meditate on God. You can see that the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex areas are more active. The right parietal lobe activity is decreased. The right parietal lobe relates to who you are and the environment around you. Decreased activity in the right parietal lobe makes the Christian’s brain more receptive to listening to thoughts from the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit is firing brain cells in your cortex. Many thoughts that come into your mind or that you are aware of are there because the Holy Spirit is firing brain cells inside your brain. You can see from the scans that the Christian brain looks totally different from the atheist’s brain.
Obviously, we cannot see God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, but we can see the Holy Spirit communicating in our brains. It has been found on brain scans that a Christian brain is significantly larger than a non-Christian brain. That’s pretty interesting. We have larger brains because of God. Your faith in Jesus allows the Holy Spirit to enter you and start this process.
Man Was Created as the Center of the Universe
I have talked about how large the universe is compared to things that are so small we don’t have a microscope to see them. It’s a lot of zeros in both directions. It is difficult to wrap your mind around the extent and magnitude of God’s creation.
One way to help you look at and compare things that are so large or small is to compare things according to scales or orders of magnitude. There are about 10 to the 60th orders of magnitude in the universe. One hundred centimeters is one order of magnitude and one thousand centimeters is 10 to the second. As I showed you, there are nearly the same number of zeros as to how big and small something is in the universe.
Interestingly, God made us the center of the universe as to size. The size of a human being is at the center of all possible sizes in the universe. As Protagoras said, according to Plato’s Theaetetus, “Man is the measure of all things”.
Smaller creatures would not have enough atoms or complexity for our kind of intelligence. Larger creatures would not work as well due to the speed of nerve impulses traveling down a large or long body or they would not process data in their minds as rapidly. They would not be as smart.
Have you ever seen a 7’4” person win a 100-yard dash? We are the perfect size for what God created us to do. On a matter of scale or orders of magnitude, we are closer to the height of Mount Everest than to a single cell in our bodies. It’s hard to believe there are so many orders of magnitude just in our bodies. As you can see, God made us his special creation. We are made to occupy the center of the universe, and Jesus is the center of the whole Christian story. These verses talk about the supremacy of Christ.
Colossians 1:15-19 NLV
Christ is as God is. God cannot be seen. Christ lived before anything was made. Christ made everything in the heavens and on earth. He made everything that is seen and things that are not seen. He made all the power of heaven. Everything was made by him and for him. Christ was before all things. All things are held together by him. Christ is the head of the church which is his body. He is the beginning of all things. He is the first to be raised from the dead. He is to have first place in everything. God the Father was pleased to have everything made perfect by Christ, His Son.
Christ is responsible for everything that you see in the universe. As Colossians says, Christ holds all things together. Louis Giglio is the person known for preaching about what I am going to cover next. Some people are unhappy with him over this. But I think that these people are limiting the power of God. We tend to bring God down to a much lower level to help us deal with who God is. Maybe these fingerprints, like the cross in the black hole of the Whirlpool Galaxy, are just coincidences even though the scriptures say you can see God in his creation. Even if the cross in the Whirlpool Galaxy is just a coincidence, if nothing else it should pique your curiosity to continue to learn and search for anything and everything about God. Maybe God does leave little fingerprints around for us to find.
So what I want to talk about next is laminin. Laminin! Does anyone know what laminin is? Laminin is a protein found in the human body. There are 20,000 genes in the body that code the development of proteins. There may be as many as 200,000 proteins in the human body. So what is so special about laminin?
Laminin is a protein adhesive molecule. Laminin is like the glue in the body. It holds our cells together. It is required for one cell to attach to another cell. If we didn’t have laminin, all the cells in our bodies would separate, and our bodies would fall apart. Do you remember Star Trek, where Captain Kirk says, “Beam me up, Scotty?” Kirk’s body turns into a bunch of particles and is sent back to the spaceship. Without laminin, you wouldn’t exist. You would just be a bunch of individual cells floating around. So, laminin is one of the most important proteins in the body. Laminin is a little like Jesus. Remember Colossians 1:17, which says that Christ holds all things together.
Well, let’s go further into Colossians to Colossians 2:19.
Colossians 2:19 NLT
For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.
Jesus Christ made laminin to hold us together. Maybe Jesus left a fingerprint in our bodies to let us know who made us. He tattooed us with his mark with the protein that holds us together. Is that possible?
This is a diagram of the molecular structure of laminin. Is this just a coincidence, or did God purposely design laminin to look like this? God has meticulously designed and created everything in his universe.
He is intimately involved and in charge of everything that happens in the universe. He is watching over his whole creation, especially us. This is the Helix Nebula and another name for the Helix Nebula is God’s Eye. Beautiful, right? God knows when a single sparrow falls to the ground. He knows the number of hairs on your head. So is laminin just a coincidence, or did he purposely make it the way it is? Either way, it’s pretty amazing. God’s fingerprints are all over his creation if we take the time to look. How about if I showed you a real image of laminin?
This is a real electron microscopic image of laminin in our bodies.
God loves his creation, and his power, awesomeness, omnipotence, and perfect design can be seen throughout all his creation. God’s favorite thing that he created was us, and he put us in charge of this world. But we messed it up pretty badly. Man turned from God and became a sinner. Jesus Christ, who breathed out galaxies and stars, came to Earth to bear our sins. The universe designer and maker had to become a sacrificial lamb as mankind’s savior. A God who is that powerful and omnipotent loves us so much that he gave his son as a sacrifice on the cross for our sins. Maybe the cross in the Whirlpool Galaxy, or laminin being shaped like a cross, are just coincidences, or maybe God wants to make sure that we understand who he is and that he is our creator and savior. We should make it a priority to routinely stop the rat race of life and take time for a scenic view.
Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God.
Are God’s laws of physics and the meticulous design of the universe just random, or did God specifically create everything that occurs in his universe?
So as Psalm 46:10 says, be still and be a stargazer.
Be still and be a nature observer.
God’s fingerprints and brush strokes are everywhere, and his signature is there for you to find.
The universe is a masterpiece and had to be created by an omnipotent designer. The universe could not just happen by chance. The odds are way too large. The power of the Big Bang explosion and the restraining control of gravity had to be so precise that the odds are one with sixty zeros after it. It would be like having a tornado blow through a junkyard, and out the other side sits a Rolls Royce. God is the only answer.
Dr. James E. Croley III is a respected eye surgeon and a Christian. He is the author of two books, Believing is Seeing and The Blinding of America. Order copies for your family and friends today.
