The World God Created

Children ask the most innocent - and often the most difficult - questions.

"Where did I come from?"
"Where did the world come from?"
"Where did God come from?"

Parents, aunts and uncles, grannies and teachers are expected to know the answers: the first question may demand an explanation of delicate matters of human biology; the second question sends Dad hunting for encyclopaedia articles on astronomy; question number three is often left to Mum - as awkward religious matters are in many households.

Picture of young child

Children's Questions

Most parents will do their best to find the answers. Some have been known to change the subject, or suggest a game, or a walk, or bedtime - just when son or daughter is displaying keen interest in the origin of the universe and the meaning of life. And that is a pity: our children deserve all the information we can give them. Of course, they may not use sophisticated phrases like 'the origin of the universe' but they do want to know where we come from and why we are here.

Actually it would be a healthier world if more adults asked such questions: perhaps it is because children are fobbed off with inadequate answers that they grow up not bothering any more with their searching enquiries. We should all be wiser if we bothered to search a little more deeply; and, having found some of the answers, if we then acted accordingly. This booklet has been produced as a challenge to those who may never have thought much about the world, how it got here, where it's going, and what we are doing on it. There are answers to these questions: clear, exciting, and demanding answers.

Answers to your children's awkward questions? Yes, but (more important) answers to the questions grown-ups hardly ever dare to ask.

It is at this point, of course, that you - the reader - perhaps become suspicious. "We've heard all this before! may be your response. Or perhaps, "These people are out to sell some book, or preach some fantastic philosophy: I must be on my guard! Certainly you must be on your guard: the world is full of dangerous propaganda and new ideas. In fact, this is, as never before, a time for new ideas. Many today are disillusioned with the 'old' ideas: they have turned away from the Church which used to dominate men's lives; they have even become disappointed with science which at one time seemed to offer the way to limitless power and energy and ease - yet has brought pollution and devastation.

Political ideas too are having to be reviewed: who would have dreamed that communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would be rejected in favour of democracy and market economics? Yet the unthinkable has happened (and in such an uncertain world other unthinkable changes and revolutions, possibly upsetting our own cosy Western world, may be round the corner!). And it is obvious that many people are actively looking for change; they are seeking alternatives to all the failed philosophies of the past: in fact 'alternatives' has become a catch-word in recent years, so that we have 'alternative' energy sources, 'alternative' technology, 'alternative' medicine. People are talking very seriously about a 'new age', an age free of what they consider to be the dogmas and straitjackets of the past.

This booklet is about a New Age - a New World - but the ideas we are going to put before you have been known for thousands of years. God's plan for the world is ageless; it is eternal, and it has never changed. It is recorded in the Bible. Man's ideas have failed; human systems have come and gone, but there is no need at all for some alternative 'new age' philosophy: the oldest plan for our planet is still the best. Please read on!

The Bible Has the Answers

Reference books

The trouble is that, if we mention the Bible, many readers will 'switch off'. What is it about the Bible that makes people switch off? Agreed it's a thick book, on thin paper, in small print, all in black and often in old-fashioned language. But go into any library, look particularly in the technical sections, and most books will appear difficult to understand: they too are in small print; to the non-specialist they may look dreary. Yet to the person whose subject it is, these are the books he loves, books that have taught him his trade, fired his imagination, got him on his career ladder.

The Bible can have the same effect. Daunting? Dreary? Perhaps - to those who haven't read it. Exciting? Fulfilling? Yes, to the many who have discovered its deep fascination ... and its up to date answers to life's questions. It may not directly help you in your trade, nor put you on your career ladder, but it will add new dimensions to the life of yourself and your family. Please don't 'switch off' if we quote fairly freely from it in this booklet. Our aim, which we are not going to hide, and which we are certainly not ashamed of, is to get you reading the Bible. You may be in for some surprises. (Of course you may already be a keen Bible reader: we are delighted if this is so, and hope you will agree with what we have to say in these pages.)

In the Beginning God ...

IN THE BEGINNING God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1,2

Genesis is the first book in the Bible, and it opens with the above words. Genesis has to do with origins, with beginnings; it has the answer to that not-so-childish question: Where do we come from?

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... God said, 'Let there be light' ... God said, 'Let the earth bring forth grass ... Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth ... Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind' ... And God said 'Let us make man ...' "

Charles Darwin

Evolution?

You prefer to believe in evolution? This is not the place to examine closely the claims of evolutionists. For the past hundred years they have had an increasing hold on people's minds; our children are taught evolution as proven fact, often with no mention of any alternative; churchmen have compromised the faith of their forefathers by trying to believe both in God and evolution.

Evolution as the basis of biology and as an explanation of the origin of man has little basis in scientific fact. It is accepted somewhat uncritically by many people simply because to them there appears to be no credible alternative. Evolutionary theory relies heavily on supposition and on assumptions that cannot be tested, but have become articles of faith in modern biology. Although it is widely taken for granted, evolution suffers from several fatal flaws.

Charles Darwin

To say that life arose by chance, evolved from simple to complex organisms by chance, and produced mankind by chance may be a plausible theory, but the proof just isn't there. Here are just three objections:

Model of a DNA molecule
DNA, The 'Blueprint' Of Life
  1. It requires too much of chance to suggest that the necessary building blocks of life could have formed spontaneously.
  2. It requires too much of chance to say that 'simple' organisms arose from those basic building blocks - in actual fact, there is really no such thing as a 'simple' organism, for even a 'simple' one-celled organism operates on unseen chemical processes every bit as complex as those in the cells of our bodies.
  3. Although the human species may not appear so very different physically from other animals, there is a huge gap between the capabilities, especially the mental capacities of any animal and those of man - the gulf is enormous, and the 'missing links' have never turned up.

One more fact may interest you: some experts (as distinct from the popular broadcasters) are now seriously talking of the earliest man having lived on this planet less than 20,000 (rather than many millions of) years ago. They still won't let go of the theory that he evolved, but by allowing such a recent origin, they are coming closer to what creationists believe.

Now we cannot expect readers to take all this for granted without further evidence, but it surely isn't unreasonable to ask you at least to allow the possibility that the universe, light, plants, birds, animals and man were all created - created by a divine hand. Do not rule it out; do not think it unthinkable: be generous-minded enough to say that creation is possible; and then let us see where this can lead us.

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars, which you have ordained, What is man that you are mindful of him ...?"

Psalm 8:3,4

Look up into the sky!

Man is the pinnacle of God's creation. But as the above Psalm suggests, there are wonders almost beyond imagination in the heavens (if we can escape air pollution, and keep away from the lights of cities). That amazing understatement in Genesis - "He made the stars also" (Genesis 1:16) - belies the fact that we can be totally lost in thinking of the numbers, sizes and distances of stars.

But let us start at home: we live on a planet, Earth, which along with the other solar planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, trace out their orbits at increasing distances from the Sun. The Sun is 'our' star: it is 93,000,000 miles from us.

"Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat"

Psalm 19:6

Solar System diagram
The Planets of the Solar System

Photograph of a spiral galaxy

Looking up at the night sky, we see a vast number of points of light. The planets account for a few of these; all the rest are stars, star clusters and galaxies - themselves great universes of countless stars. There are in fact said to be more than 100,000,000,000 galaxies visible to modern telescopes, each containing thousands of millions of stars. And the distances of the stars are astounding: the next nearest star (after the sun) is 23 million million miles away; the next nearest galaxy is about 50,000 times further than that. We are lost in the numbers of 'noughts'!

Spiral Galaxy

And where did all this come from? There are several competing theories about how the universe arose, and we shall not stop to examine them here. In any case, they all push the important question one stage further back: Who made it? Was there a Creator? Where did He come from? - and so on. Science can help, but we need more than Science to comprehend the infinite: we need faith.

Now if faith is needed to imagine the beginnings of the universe, then faith is needed, too, if we are to come to grips with life. We may be dazzled by the numbers, size and distances of stars, but we ought to be equally dazzled by the wonders of fife under the microscope. The world, in other words, is as fantastic in small things as in huge things, in the microscopic and in the immense.

Atoms, molecules and living cells

Ask an atomic physicist what is inside the atom, and he will start talking about neutrons, protons, electrons, neutrinos, and other "fundamental particles". He will try to explain terms such as "charm", "strangeness" and "colour"; not the charm or colour we are familiar with, but curious properties to be found within the world of the infinitesimal. Physicists are struck by the beauty and symmetry of the rules and patterns which these subatomic particles follow. Many see the handiwork of a supreme and all-knowing God.

Diagram of an atom
Diagram of a living cell

Ask a molecular biologist what "makes" life, and he will tell you about the wonder and complexity within every single one of the 1,000,000,000,000,000 cells that make up your body. Why are they alive? What is the difference between a test tube full of chemicals and a growing organism? Where did life come from?

Questions about how life keeps going, why it dies - all these are relatively easy to answer. But "Where did it come from?" "Why is it here?" - those are the tough ones.

Diagram of a living cell
Picture of a flower

The scientist may explain to us all the intricacies and marvels of chromosomes, genes, enzymes - what it is that makes a poppy red, or a pansy blue; what it is that makes baby look like Mum or Dad. But he will not be able to give us answers to those harder questions.

Introducing a Creator, however answers all our questions; we shall go through life much less puzzled, and a great deal more satisfied, if we are prepared to acknowledge a Divine hand in the world around us.


The Bible records the following words, uttered thousands of years ago by a man named Job, when he began to appreciate the wonder of God's works:

"I have uttered what I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."

Job 42:3

May we suggest, then, that you stop and think before you are caught up with the idea of a world which (so they say) 'somehow' came into being, and which (so they say) does not need a God to explain it!

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