Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, from the radio ministry of Pastor James W.
Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Duana, Florida.
Our prayer is that these five-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.
Now here's your host, Pastor James W.
Knox.
And good day to each and every one of you.
I'm Brother James, and I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.
And I welcome you one more time to the preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.
More than thrilled to have you aboard today, and hope that God will use our time together to encourage you as he has me, as I've looked over the contents of a very, very old and long out-of-print booklet entitled Mistakes God Did Not Make.
And I had so much fun reading this little book that I enjoyed it so immensely that I want to give the material to you.
I want you to hear it.
And I can't get you a copy of it because uh, as I said, this is a very old and worn uh little pamphlet here, but the information found herein is just uh well, it's just really a blessing.
And so we're gonna take a look at it.
Life on earth depends on the good behavior of things as small and tiny as snowflakes.
Just a little mistake by the Creator, and the earth would be as dead as the other planets.
Many astute minds have overlooked the fact that if life had evolved on the earth without a mastermind, it would have evolved its own destroyers.
If the Holy Scriptures had not been inspired, some of the hundreds of mistakes that are found in all other ancient books would have gotten into the Bible, and it would be as easily discredited as they are.
Many visionary theories would not be taken seriously if men realized that through the centuries subtraction and addition must play together or break up the game.
If, for example, in the last three thousand years the annual birth rate of mice and of men had exceeded the death rate by one half of one percent, a million more worlds the size of ours would have been needed for colonization.
Ice or insects, gadflies or grasshoppers, bugs or boars, worms or weasels, mice or men.
It matters not if the annual increase had been one percent during the life of Noah, the quantity would have multiplied six thousand times.
That would have been far worse than the flood.
Honest thinkers must see, if they investigate, that only an infallible mind could have adjusted our world and its life and its amazing intricacies.
Now I want to show you that it would have been a mistake if God had done things any other way than the way the Bible says he did.
The God of the Holy Scriptures is the only God whom scientists seriously consider.
All others have been discredited.
He is the only God whom free thinkers, rethinkers, and me thinkers regard as a worthwhile target.
Yet the nominal church has leaders who apologize for the mistakes of the Bible.
Imagine that.
The only source of authority the church has, and yet men within the church think it their duty to attack that authority.
Now, of course, if through the ages God has sponsored a religion that needs to have its discredited theories replaced every century, as science does with its own theories, that God must have made many mistakes.
But man is the mistake maker of the universe.
He has made more trouble for God and himself than is within the bounds of human calculation.
A colony of ants makes fewer errors.
A library could be filled with details of silly and even appalling superstitions that have shackled the human race.
Many of them are with us yet.
All other ancient books accepted the delusions of their times.
You would expect God to know better, and he did.
If the Bible warned against black cats or planting in the wrong phase of the moon, or when the signs of the zodiac are not lined up just so, if the Bible had sponsored any of the hoodoo, voodoo, pow wow, and jinx defeating rites that are popular with many, ignorance would be a Christian asset.
But those who insist that the Bible is folklore have yet to explain why the Bible disapproves of old wives' fables, disapproves of sorcery, disapproves of enchantment, soothsaying, witchcraft, necromancy, and the host of superstitions that enslave the world.
Where are those superstitions in the Bible?
Nothing there but rebuke for those taken in thereby.
You know, it's not so long ago that the treatment of many sick people started with the bleeding of the patient.
It wasn't all that long ago that children with measles were dosed with a tea made from the refuse of the sheep barn, and children with croup were given a drink so revolting that I won't even tell you what it was.
Boys and girls with chicken pox were made to lay down in the barnyard, and the chickens flew over them.
If the Bible prescribed any of a hundred medical remedies, now discarded by science, atheists would make much of it.
In the Bible we have figs for poultice, wine for disinfectant, oil to anoint damaged tissues, all of which time has proven to be sound medical practice.
The Bible is the only ancient sacred book that has emphasized prophecy and has staked its case on the forecasts of the prophets.
Prophecies that do not come true ought to discredit their purveyors, but unfortunately multitudes come back for second and third helping.
You know, back in the days of the Little Brick Schoolhouse, boys and girls heard and read forecasts of teachers, philosophers, statements, poets, politicians, some preachers, who with amazing unanimity prophesied the speedy moral uplift of the nations.
Then came the Great War.
Then came the Second World War.
You know, for a few decades it seemed evident to many people that reform forces working in and with the church might Christianize society.
You ought to read the writings of the late 1800s.
But the Lord foretold a different end for the world and a different course for man.
And though a million volunteer prophets should cry peace, peace, everyone will be discredited, and every one of their prophecies had to be discarded as the last century unfolded.
The Bible?
The Bible stands unimpeached.
Surely no student of the Word of God will say that God ever promised peace, prosperity, and stability to any nation, when its show houses, stadiums, arenas, grandstands, nightclubs, and saloons are crowded, and its churches are comparatively empty.
You know, it takes a great deal of gall, as far as I'm concerned, it takes a lot of nerve to continue to blow the whistle for utopia as the next stop along the line.
But still we have them.
Peace is just around the corner.
If we could just take care of a few terrorists, if we could just take care of a few rogue nations, if we could just get rid of those narrow-minded fundamentalists, then we could have peace on earth.
And everybody that talks that way will sooner or later be embarrassed.
Because the Bible says just the opposite.
Oh, we've had prophecies from every stratum of society, from pool room to pulpit.
Those not in harmony with the Word of God have all failed.
Let me put it mildly.
I can understand how a misinformed prophet can remain popular before his prophecies are discredited.
But I can't understand how he can continue unabashed after the opposite of what he has prophesied comes true.
These people that told you about Y2K, they're still being paid to give speeches and hold seminars.
It's amazing.
These people that told you the late great planet Earth would pass away in the 1970s, they're still on the religious TV, and people still take them seriously when they quote unquote prophesy.
You know if the Bible forecast is right, God's forecast has never been wrong.
It seems to me that men should be apologizing to the Bible, not for the Bible.
Because the Bible has never had to be rewritten to cover its tracks.
It's never had to be pulled off the shelf and a newer, later edition put out because the old one was proven to be faulty.
Oh no.
Those who think the Bible is just a back number.
They'd be wise to reflect on the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said in Matthew 24 35, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
The Bible records no prophecy having to do with our times that has not been fulfilled or is in the process of fulfillment exactly as it was written.
Now scientists tell us there are nearly a hundred elements in the makeup of our world.
Some say now over one hundred, it depends on which chart you're looking at.
You can argue about those things, but anybody that ever sat through a chemistry class in high school remembers the dreaded periodic table of elements.
These elements have affinities and aversions.
They are the playgrounds of opposing forces.
Yet with all their pulling and pushing, there is a nicety of balance that is amazing to thinkers.
There may be other elements somewhere in the universe, but another one might upset the balance of those we have, and certainly if any one of a dozen elements that could be named were taken away, Earth would be a desert.
God has just the right number, in just the right proportion, and they behave exactly the right way, so that all the pulls balance all the pushes.
Without lime there could be no bones.
Without oxygen there could be neither air nor water.
Without nitrogen there could be no life.
If there were too much of any one of a dozen elements that could be named, or if some of the deadly poisons were not made harmless by locking them together, life would be impossible.
The world would choke us, poison us, burn us, freeze us, or blow us up.
Now you can believe in evolution if you want, but it's a lie and you know it.
It's just something men desperately cling to in hopes they can rid their mind and conscience of God.
Most of what man knows he learned from some other person's experiments or mistakes.
And after a fourth of his life is spent in school, man fumbles with the mysteries of life and matter, sometimes with an air of profundity.
But God served no apprenticeships.
He had no counselor, he had no instructor, he had no teacher, no trial and error experiments until he could get it right.
You know that if through the centuries snowflakes accumulated one half of one percent faster than they melted, the water of the earth would pile up in mountains of ice until the weight crushed the crust of the earth, or gathered all the water of the earth in a frozen embrace.
Now think about it, think on how how a little change would result in that one half of one percent and consider that there have been glacial ages.
If the melting point of ice were slightly lower, if the earth were tilted otherwise than it is, if the highlands were higher, if the atmosphere were thinner or shallower, if the sun were smaller, cooler, or farther away, this this might easily follow, this ruin of all.
But God knew what he was doing.
He put everything in the balance, measured it out perfectly.
From absolute zero, four hundred and sixty degrees below Fahrenheit zero, up to the boiling point of water at two hundred and twelve degrees above, is six hundred and seventy-two degrees.
Now anywhere between these extremes, God could have fixed the freezing melting point.
But listen, anywhere except where it is, at thirty-two degrees above would have been a mistake.
If water froze four percent of the six hundred and seventy-two degree range lower than it now does, it could rain in a temperature of six degrees above zero.
Man and most warm blooded animals would chill to death with a wet skin and such cold.
Where now there are vast fields of snow that store up water against the heat and drought of summer, there would be winter floods and guttered hillsides.
If God had fixed the freezing point two percent of the range higher, there would be frosts whenever the temperature dropped to forty five degrees above, and snow and ice would never melt in colder areas of the earth.
Whatever caused the advance and retreat of the ice fields in glacial ages, there could be no retreat if water froze at forty five degrees above.
Not an accident, my friend, not a chance.
The mind of God.
Much as the existence of plants and animals depends on the freezing point being where it is, it would never do to have oceans freeze at thirty two degrees above.
In polar seas the yearly thawing could not balance the yearly freezing, and ice would accumulate through the centuries.
To prevent such a disaster, God put salt in the sea, and arranged that evaporation takes nothing but fresh water back to the land.
What a fickle substance water is, its molecules locked together in flinty embrace as ice, cover the earth with a dry blanket of snow in winter, quench the thirst of plants and animals, shade us from the sun as clouds, drive ponderous machinery as steam, and if superheated, push one another through the steel plates of a boiler.
Then if you take water apart and light a match, it'll blow you up.
Now suppose water were just a little more or just a little less volatile than what it is.
If it evaporated more readily, there would be more moisture in the air and more clouds in the sky.
But land and vegetation would more quickly dry up in drought.
If water evaporated less readily, more of the earth would be a desert.
Water gets heavier as it gets colder.
Atheistic scientists would assure us that this is a fixed law, eternally unalterable, if they had not seen ice.
You see, heavy ice would settle to the bottom.
Some lakes and rivers would freeze solid, icebergs below the surface would endanger shipping.
Animals could not cross streams in winter.
God did not overlook anything.
When water cools to thirty-two degrees above, the so-called law goes into reverse, and water becomes much lighter.
How can that be?
If God gave to an inexperienced angel a barrel of human brains and gave him the task of designing another world, if that angel had the brains of a thousand scientists, he would not in a hundred years think of combining two gases into a substance so that man could build houses with it, walk on it, drink it, wash in it, catch fish out of it, turn a desert into a garden with it, make rainbows out of it, drive machinery with it, boil beans in it, and then use it to put out the fire.
When God made the world, he had vast quantities of chlorine and sodium, one destructive to life, the other a deadly poison.
This was not a problem for a resourceful God.
He made them fond of each other.
He locked them together in each other's embrace as salt, without which earth would be uninhabitable.
Then, because too much salt on the surface of the earth would ruin it, he buried most of it.
Now, after thousands of years, man has learned how to take salt apart and make poison gas for his wars, and disinfectants for his plague spots.
You know, if wonders were not so commonplace, the world would marvel that God has created elements that reverse their very nature when combined with others.
Oxygen makes the fire blaze with a heat that will melt steel.
Hydrogen is explosive when touched with flame.
Together, as water, they put fire out.
Nitrogen makes air in combination with oxygen, but when it is fixed in other combinations, it becomes food, fertilizer, medicine, or explosives.
Why did not God make the world so big that nations would not destroy themselves fighting over it?
Indeed, some religious groups talk bravely about building a new world.
And there doesn't seem to be any place to build it.
Why not have a world twice as great in diameter?
Well, the force of gravity depends on the size of the world of the planet.
To multiply the size of the planet would multiply the weight of everything on the Earth, from dewdrop to avalanche.
Imagine, if you can, a 400-pound fireman carrying a 350-pound woman down a ladder that was near to breaking with its own weight.
Falling hail would hit much harder, heads of wheat would be too heavy for the straw.
Great forest would go down in a sleet storm, fruit trees would break under the burden of their fruit.
A fall downstairs would kill most people, and people with shapely ankles would be most unfortunate.
The contents of the stomach would weigh much more, and the man who ate a large beefsteak might dream he'd swallowed a skillet.
God knew what he was doing.
He did it all just right.
What would life on Earth be like if the Earth were one half its present diameter?
Well certainly the weight of everything on the Earth would be greatly reduced.
Astronomers say that a one hundred and fifty pound man removed to a smaller planet like Mars would weigh only fifty seven pounds.
Mars has a diameter more than half as great as the Earth.
If sand, dust, and loose matter on the Earth's surface were only one third its present weight, you can guess what would happen the first windstorm that came along.
And imagine what a wind would do to the seawater if that water weighed one third its present weight.
The effect on climate and temperature would depend on the adjustment of other factors.
But I say again, the Lord got it all just right.
He made everything just the way it needed to be.
The marvel and the wonder and the perfection of his creation ought to make every one of us pause and give praise and honor, awe-inspired worship to the true and living God.
You know, there are many religions in the world, you're aware of that, but Buddha never claimed creation of the heavens and the earth.
Mohammed never claimed for himself the creation of the heavens and the earth.
Confucius never claimed for himself the creation of the heavens and the earth.
The dead Founders of Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Christian Science, and other similar falsehoods.
Their leaders never claimed to have created this marvel known as the universe.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, ah, my friend.
John chapter one attributes the creation to him.
Colossians chapter one attributes the creation to him.
Now you must admit all religions are not the same.
And they certainly don't all make the same claim.
Mary Baker Eddy never claimed to be the creator.
Joseph Smith never claimed to be the creator.
Russell and Rutherford never claimed to be the creator.
Not one Pope in all the hundreds that have lived and died ever claimed to be the Creator.
But the Lord Jesus Christ referred to himself as I am.
He called himself the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I believe him.
I believe that I live not on an accidental chance, but on a created earth.
I believe that I am not a chance product of evolution, but a created being.
Not only did he create this earth, he came to this earth, died upon this earth, rose from the dead upon this earth, and he saves sinners upon this earth.
The Bible says that if a man will but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, he can be, he shall be, he will be, saved for all of eternity.
Sins forgiven, washed away in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Wouldn't you like to know that forgiveness of sins?
The one with power enough to create the heavens and the earth certainly has power enough to save your soul.
And the Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Neither is there salvation in any other.
There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
What a word.
Jesus said ye must be born again.
It's not an option.
If you intend to spend eternity in heaven, you will have to trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Thanks for tuning in today.
Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast.
For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W.
Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist the Land, or our website, Bible Baptistteland.com.
Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.