01.08. Lucky Accident or Design?

Lucky Accident or Design?

Now consider another, even greater, miracle. The atmosphere around us is made up of two main ingredients—nitrogen and oxygen—whose mixture is always the same, whether at the highest mountaintops or in the deepest caves. The perfect balance is 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. You might ask, "Why is it this way?" Is there some particular reason for it? Is it important that we have this exact mixture of nitrogen and oxygen?" Yes, I can assure you it is most important. If the nitrogen were increased, our life processes would slow down and we would die. If the oxygen were measurably increased, our life processes would be rapidly increased. Our pulse rate would just run away and soon we would wear out and die. But God made it just right.

Suppose, for example, it was two-thirds nitrogen and one-third oxygen. If that proportion prevailed, 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 laughing gas, N2O, the same kind dentists sometimes use when extracting teeth. Or suppose it was divided half and half. That would produce nitric oxide, which is quickly fatal to all forms of life.

Was it just a lucky accident that it came out like this? Did some blind happenstance of nature produce this exact mixture that is necessary for life support? Or was there an intelligent design? This world would become chaotic if this atmospheric mixture slipped out of control for just a single instant. We would see one of the most tremendous of all explosions, because nitrogen is the basic component of gunpowder; and oxygen, of course, makes for rapid combustion. It would be "Goodbye, world!"

And yet some day, apparently, there is going to an explosion like this. Some day the elements are going to melt with fervent heat, the Bible says. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:10 that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." 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. And the elements will be involved in it because the elements are going to melt. Maybe God is going to change just very, very slightly the present proportion of nitrogen and oxygen, causing this great conflagration to take place. I do know this—we must be ready for that day when it comes. The Bible indicates it is near at hand.

Another of the mysteries of nature was described in the Bible long before it was investigated by science. We read about it in Job 38:8-11. "Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?"

What beautiful, poetic language we find here to describe the creation of the ocean. It speaks of it as being born and coming forth from the womb. God says that the cloud was the garment of it and a thick darkness was a swaddling band placed around the ocean at its birth. But then God added, "Here ye may come but no further; here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

The scientists of this world have been amazed in learning the secrets of the tidal actions. They still don’t understand all the deep, underwater cataclysmic actions that affect the tides and wave patterns. No naturalist on the face of the earth has figured out all the secrets of these swift tidal waves as they move to and fro in their own mysterious ways.