Science and Revelation

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 5, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 18.

Science and Revelation

SCIENCE can do little in revealing the method or mode of creation. Its explanations so-called are all humanistic and rather detract from, than add to, the glory of creation and the majesty of its Creator.

Its childish prattle is hushed into silence by the mighty revelation of the word. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Gen. 1:1. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” Ps. 33:6. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.” Heb. 11:3. “He spake, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Ps. 33:9.

What a mighty word is this! Obedient to His voice, all things, both material and spiritual, stood up before the Lord Jehovah. The flying hosts of heaven and the teeming things of earth are not only the work of His hand; but they came into being by the breath of His mouth. Ps. 33:6.

“The breath of His mouth.” Thus would revelation teach us how easy for God was the task of creation. His breath alone was sufficient to frame the mighty, immeasurable universe. And the inspired penman, throwing his enlightened thought back upon the ponderous event, and gazing enraptured at the spangled heavens of creation, cries out in exulting wonder, “Lo, these are only the outlying borders of His works: what a whisper of a word we hear of Him! The thunder of His power who can comprehend!” Warren’s translation. Job 26:14.

Indeed, if, in accordance with both science and revelation, all the universe within our reach and sight is but one of the suburbs of creation, how small a whisper do we hear of that “word of His power” (Heb. 1:3) which called the things which were not as tho they were (Rom. 4:17), and bade them forever stand forth!

Here is a view of creation worthy of its Creator. And this wondrous picture of revelation, this masterpiece of divine knowledge, painted for us by the inspired artists of the Scriptures, can not be improved upon by any lines that the childish hands of science might blunderingly smear across the illumined canvas.

Science may teach us much as to what God has created, open up many of the mysteries of this wonderful work, and teach us secrets beneficent alike to body, mind, and soul; but to explain creation aside from the word, all its efforts are fruitless and its mistakes pitiful.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” These are the opening words of the first book of the Bible. They are worthy a place in the forefront of the Scriptures. They compose the noble preface of divine revelation. As one has said, “In these few words grander truths are declared, deeper mysteries solved, and profounder interests . . . revealed, than in all the secular books ever written, or in all the wisest philosophies ever framed by human skill.”

It is the most weighty sentence ever uttered. In ten words the greatest secrets of the universe are laid bare. By ten words the whole universe is illumined as with the light of God. And these ten words contain among their number five great universal terms—five unmeasured totalities; namely, God, beginning, creation, heaven, earth. “And these, which else are a profound, baffling the utmost plummet of human thought, it irradiates at a single stroke.”

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” “A sublimer passage than this, from the first word to the last,” says Cuvier, the naturalist, “never can or will come from a human pen.”

Man when he builds anything must work with hands and tools and materials, and put forth time and strength to accomplish his tasks. And science in seeking to explain the creation would seek to explain it in the light of man’s methods.

First, to explain creation, science asks for time—unmeasured time. Contrast this with that word which declares, “He spake, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Ps. 33:9. As they say in Latin, “Dictum factum;” or as we say in English, “Said and done.” No period of time required; no delay interposed. As with light, so with all—“He said, Let it be; and it was.”

Secondly, to explain creation, science asks for a humanized strength, a minimum of power, as with man, working through long intervals to create the world. Not so the picture as given in the Scriptures which say, “And God said, Let the waters . . . be gathered together, . . . and let the dry land appear; and it was so.” “And God said, Let the earth bring forth; . . . and the earth brought forth.” “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven; . . . and it was so.” “Dictum factum,” always and every time; “said and done.”

Thirdly, science to explain creation asks for the human method of ways and means, of instruments and appliances. But contrast this with this selfsame picture of revelation, this dictum factum, this said and done, this “God said, Let be, and it was,” of the Scriptures; and science is rebuked for its humanizing of the creative work.