THE WORLD OF ZOOLOGY

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Genesis 1:24-25

12-9-56    8:15 a.m.

Now today in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, we come to The World Of Zoology: God makes the animals that live on the land.  Last Sunday morning, we looked at God’s world of ichthyology, how God made the fish, and the world of ornithology – how God made the birds; and this morning The World of Zoology: how God made the animals.  In Genesis 1:24-25: 

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind": and it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth –

the whole world of the reptilia –

after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[Genesis 1:24-25]

Do you see how many times Moses will reiterate that law of life and heredity?  Look in the eleventh verse of the first chapter: "And God said" – wayyōmer ‘Elōhim – "Let the earth bring forth grass, herb, fruit tree, after his kind’" [from Genesis 1:11]. 

Now look at that same thing repeated in the twelfth verse: "And the earth brought forth grass, herb, tree, after his kind" – after his kind [from Genesis 1:12].  All right, look at the twenty-first verse: "And God created all those living creatures that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind" [based on Genesis 1:21].

Now look in the twenty-fourth verse: "wayyōmer ‘Elōhim yatsa."  You know, you had a different "bring forth" here in the eleventh verse [Genesis 1:11]: dasha – that refers to the grass. Yatsa – that refers to these cattle and living creatures: "Let the earth yatsa, all of these creatures, creations on the earth, cattle, creeping thing, beast, after his kind" [from Genesis 1:24]. Now look at the twenty-fifth verse: "God made the beast of the earth after his kind, cattle after their kind, creeping things after his kind: and God saw that it was good" [Genesis 1:25].

I think I may have been mistaken in looking at that, but I think he says that ten times in those one, two, three, four, five verses.  Ten times Moses says that.  Well evidently, by revelation, Moses felt that that was certainly a fixed order.  And what we find revealed to Moses we find in all of the studies of the manifestations and phenomena of life around us.

There is not anything more fixed than that thing that Moses says God fixed:  these two great laws of life.  First, life can only come from life – that’s all – after its kind.  You can watch and watch and watch and watch forever, but you will never see life generated except from life preceding – no exception to that.  Moses says so.  All life around us says so.  However you combine elements and however you watch for spontaneous generation, life only comes from life.  That’s a fixed law of God, according to Moses, and it’s a fixed law of science if a man will open his heart and his mind to see the truth.

All right, the second great law of biology is this: that life only gives birth to the kind of life it itself received from its ancestors.  That’s a fixed law of God, says Moses: "each after its kind" – no exception [Genesis 1:11-12, 24-25].  And that’s a fixed law of God.  If we look into the phenomena of life around us, there’s no exception to it. God made these species there in this day of the recreation, and they are the same fixed species that we see all around us to this present hour.

Now God, in refurnishing this world – preparing the house for the tenant, preparing the temple for the worshiper – God is going through these days remaking His ruined earth.  And in remaking this earth, these animals and these creations that God made here are the same animals and the same creations that we see around us today – all of them.  They’re right here, every single one of them.  As God made it in this recreation, we see it around us today.

And the same laws that govern all of this manifestation of zoological life today are the same laws by which God fixed their life and heredity back there in the day of this recreation.  For untold centuries now, the birds have made their nests and have raised their young.  And they continue to do so just according to the law of God, and we see no variation in that.  As they did then, they do now, they do tomorrow each kind receiving from its ancestors the life that it in turn delivers to its progeny through the centuries, through the millenniums: the fixed biological laws of God.

Now, the only thing that has come to pass to change this in the day that God made it is God looked upon it and saw that it was good.  In the last verse: "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good" [from Genesis 1:31].  The only difference is between then and now, following this story of the recreation [Genesis 1:3-31], you have the story of the fall of Adam and Eve [Genesis 3:1-24].  And for their sakes the ground was cursed, and it brought up instead of that beautiful herb – for the man’s sake the herb was cursed, and instead of bringing a beautiful flower or a beautiful sweet-perfumed fruit, it brought burrs and thorns and stickers [Genesis 3:17-19].  For the man’s sake it was cursed.  God never made the herb that way.  The fall cursed it and the same thing about this animal world [Romans 8:18-22].

Those little infusorians that we spoke about a few Sundays ago ["God Creates the Living Creature," 12-2-56], little tiny unicellular animalcules, God made them for good.  He created those little animals just as much so as He created an elephant or a cow. 

And those little animalcules God made for good.  Life as we see it is impossible without them: the bacteria that make possible the digestive organs and their processes in the elementary canal, filled with good bacteria, you wouldn’t live without them; the bacteria that makes milks sour – oh, it’s endless. 

But when death came, disease came, and some of those little animalcules turned into diphtheria and turned into tuberculosis and turned into polio – all of those things by which man is wasted and destroyed.  Just like a cancer cell:  a cancer cell is a good cell.  It could be a stomach cell, could be a brain cell, could be a lung cell, could be a liver cell – could be any kind of a cell, even a bone cell.  But it turns wild, and nobody knows why it turns wild.  And it becomes voracious and consuming and ultimately destructive.  That was not the way God made it.  God didn’t create it that way.

All of God’s cells, all of God’s bacteria, all of God’s infusorians, all of God’s protozoans, all of God’s animalcules, all of God’s animals – all of them, everything that God made – all of God’s herbs and His grasses and His trees, all of it was good [Genesis 1:12, 21].  God created it good, and it was only cursed and made an instrument of disease and death after the fall of man [Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 5:12, 8:19-21].

Now let’s go back to this thing of the specific creation of God.  It says here that God made all of these animals, every one of them, and He placed in them those great laws of biology by which they produce after each one his kind.  And God made each one this way, and that way, and that way, and all of them were specifically made – each one was made.

The cow was made.  God made the cow.  In the beginning, there was a cow that God made.  In the beginning, God made a horse.  In the beginning, God made a lion.  In the beginning, God made a cat.  In the beginning, God made all of these species that we see today.  God created each one.  And He set each one in a biological framework that each one would produce just exactly after his kind.  And all of that was by specific creation.

Now we have just, oh, just to look at it, that’s all – not even to discuss it.  The specific creation of God is a wonderful thing to look at.  Let’s take our friend Elsie the cow.  What a wonderful critter is Elsie the cow.  On a cold morning like this, if you were fetched up out on the farm, she would just be so happy to see you come.  And you’re out there to milk Elsie the cow, and she just brushes your face with her tail, and she looks at you with her soft brown eyes: Elsie the cow.  And you pat her on the back, and get you a stool, and away you go to milking.  Well, that’s a marvelous thing.  That’s a marvelous thing. 

Did you know that cow has four stomachs?  God made four stomachs.  That cow will go out and ruminate and graze and eat grass and eat fodder, and all of that will go into stomach number one.  Then the cow will go down to the spring, or if she can find some dirty water somewhere, she’ll drink that and not that clean pure water.  She find some dirty water somewhere in an old track or in an old mud puddle, why she’d drink that and that goes into stomach number two.  Well, after the day’s ruminating and grazing, why she’ll lie down under the shade somewhere, come to the barn and lie down, and pretty soon you’ll see her eating.

I used to wonder at that as a boy.  Wasn’t that a marvelous thing?  No critter in this earth can ever enjoy dinner so much and so long and so protractedly as a cow.  Eat it one time, eat it a second time – marvelous thing.  Well, stomach number one, by those peristaltic actions, will take all of that feed and fodder and hay and grain, roll it up into a little ball and pass it over there to number two.  And then stomach number two will saturate it with liquids and fluids and get it all ready.

And then the cow will, at her leisure, lie down and then chew her cud.  That comes out of stomach number two.  Then after she chews her cud, as you say, why then all that goes to stomach number three.  And there in stomach number three, why it is digested.  And then after it is mostly digested, then stomach number three will pass it over there to stomach number four.  And then number four will pass it finally into the blood stream, and the blood stream will take it and make milk out of it. 

Oh, you just find me somebody that’s got lots of sense that can tell me how that cow makes milk out of that passed into the blood stream?  Why, it’s a marvelous thing.  It’s a miracle.  Well, she makes milk out of it, and then that farmer’s out there just wailing away, making a living for himself and his orphan children.  Isn’t that a marvelous thing?

But to me the marvelous thing about it is this: that cow’s got four stomachs.  And pretty soon there comes along a little calf.  Well, that little calf doesn’t know a thing in the world – just born into this world, little old legs just wobbling around.  That little old calf finally get up after he’s born, wobble around.  In no time at all, he’s frisky and strong and healthy.  And that little calf, that little calf will eat a little grass and eat a little fodder.  That goes into stomach number one.

Then that little calf will drink some milk – – see his momma drinks the milk and that little calf will drink some milk – – I mean, that little calf will drink some water, see his mother drink water and the little calf drink water.  And that’ll go into stomach number two just like momma cow.  Then that little calf will nurse.  He’ll get his dinner of milk.  And when that little calf drinks milk, that milk doesn’t go into stomach number one – bypasses number one.  It doesn’t go into stomach number two.  It bypasses number two.  It doesn’t go into number three.  It bypasses number three.  When that calf drinks that milk, that milk will go directly into stomach number four.  Well how does that calf know to send that milk into stomach number four?

The purpose of stomach number one, and number two, and number three is to digest all of that rough material and make it possible to get into stomach number four.  But the milk is already in a fluid form and already partly digested.  And the calf drinks milk, and it goes directly into stomach number four.  What a wonderful thing that that calf already knows about.  Why, he’s almost as smart as we are.

Why, we can drink and eat, and the Lord only knows the miracles that happen right down here – just the most unbelievable things in the world that I know about except that I don’t know them.  I do them, but I don’t know how I do them – all of the things that go into these processes of digestion, the specific creation of God. God made that there on that sixth day [Genesis 1:26-31].

Why, you can go on endlessly with that.  There comes along a camel.  That camel was made for the desert.  He’s got a foot like a cord tire – the most perfect thing for traction in the sand.  And He’s got a stomach number two that’ll hold water like all get out, and he carries his pantry around on his back.  Up here on his back, he’s got food stored.  All that hump on his back is an extra storing of food.  And he can go days and days and days without any water and without any food taking the water out of his second stomach and living off of the food that in the form of fatty tissue he has stored up there in the hump on his back.  That’s a marvelous thing to look at.

Now listen, we’re going to quit that.  What I’m talking about is that God made these things, and that’s what I want to show you this morning.  God made these things specifically.  Moses says so [Genesis 1:21, 25], and when we look at the world around us, the world around us says so.

Now that’s the opposite of what all of our children are taught.  That’s just the opposite of what all of our books are saying.  Why, if you were to go into anybody’s scientific biological class, class of biology, and you go in there and you say these things, why they would look at you as though you weren’t real bright or you were a member of the First Baptist Church – one or the other.  But in either event, you sure would be a funny kind of a specimen if you went in there believing those things for according to the books, and according to the teachers, and according to all of the enlightened ones, those things were not made.  They were not specifically created.  They were developed from some primordial cell back there.  They evolved, and all of these things came into being through the long processes of time; and they evolved into the different species, the different biological phenomena that you see now. 

Now we’re going – we’re just at the threshold, I say, of really looking at that.  So this morning, let’s look at that just kind of – you know, we’re just approaching it just to kind of get acquainted with the problem before us, just a little touching of it to see what it feels like and the texture of it, what this thing is.

Let’s take our friend the bee.  Oh!  Listen, you could have five dozen lectures on the bee, and every one of them would be marvelously interesting: how that bee is, and how he works, and how he’s made.  Oh, he is a marvelous little creation, the bee.  His mother is a queen, and his father is a drone; but the bee, the worker bee, is neither.  He’s not a drone.  He’s not a queen.  He’s a worker bee, and he exudes wax.  Out of his body comes sweat would you call it?  It exudes a substance that when it dries it turns into wax.  And his foot is like a trowel, and he can make the most beautiful geometrical hexagonal hives you ever saw.  You watch that little bee as he makes that hive: marvelous thing, marvelous thing.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.  This is what I’m talking about about the bee.  That little bee lives by making honey which itself is a miracle.  Did you know they had a lawsuit one time about the label on a bottle of honey?  They made the synthetic honey; and it looked and it tasted just like real honey, so they put on the bottle "pure honey."  Well the honey growers association – the apiaries, the apiists – what is that word?  Apiarists.  Huh?  Apiary, apiarists.

Well I – – the honey bee association, the apiarists, the honey bee association – they took it to court and they said, "You can’t put a label on this bottle, ‘pure honey,’ unless it’s made by a bee.  There’s not any pure honey but the honey made by a bee."  And the company that was making this synthetic stuff and labeling it honey, they said, "Why, you can’t tell the difference.  It looks, it smells, it tastes just like honey – pure honey." 

So they went to court about it, and the honey bee association did this in that court.  They took them a long little enclosure, a glass enclosure, and down here at this end of that glass enclosure, they put that synthetic stuff, and down here at this end of that enclosure, they put pure honey made by a bee.  Then, on the inside of that enclosure, they turned loose a whole group of honey bees.  And they were hungry, and they swarmed around on the inside of that enclosure.  And they went down there at that synthetic stuff made by this manufacturing company, and they all stuck up their noses – every one of them.  They wouldn’t touch it.  They wouldn’t go near it. 

But down here at this pure honey place, they swarmed and they ate to their hearts’ content.  And that’s the reason that when you buy a bottle of honey and it says "pure honey" on it, it’s got to be made by a bee.  The apiarists – – if that’s what they’re called – – they won that court suit.  They won it, and it’s the law of the land.  You can’t say this is honey unless it’s made by a bee.  That’s a miracle.  Nobody can do that.

Now wait a minute.  Let’s go back to my honey bee – what I’m talking about.  Now this honey bee is out ruminating.  He’s out gathering nectar in order to manufacture honey which, I say, is a miracle how he takes the nectar out of these little flowers and it goes through his body and he manufactures honey.  Nobody understands that.  It’s one of God’s secrets. 

Well anyway, that little honey bee buzzing around, buzzing around, buzzing around, and here’s a pretty little red clover flower.  And he buzzes to that little red clover flower, and he sticks his proboscis into the heart of that little flower, and he gets just a little bit of nectar.  But, while he is doing that, he’s also scattered a little pollen shaking the flower around – that little sticky stuff.  And when he comes out of that flower, he’s not only got a little bit of nectar, but he also has got his proboscis plugged up with pollen.  And he can’t breathe, and he can’t breathe.  His nose is plugged up; he can’t breathe.

Well, why doesn’t he suffocate?  Why doesn’t he suffocate?  All right, down here on his knees, down here on his knees, the honey bee has got some brushes; and when he comes out with his nose plugged up with pollen and he can’t breathe, when he comes out, he gets his knees down on his nose and he unplugs his proboscis with the brushes on his knees.  Then he gets him a great big breath of air, and he goes back in to get some more nectar.

Now, what I want to know is this – – that’s not the point – – what I want to know is this: this smart fellows who write the books and who teach in the classes, these smart fellows say that all of these things were developed in answer to a need.  You know, that’s the fundamental evolutionary hypothesis that the thing develops as there develops a need for it.  You know, and then as there’s a need develop, why here comes along the answer to the need.  That’s evolution.

Well, the first honey bee, of course, didn’t have any brushes on his knees.  You know, according to the evolution, he just came along and he didn’t have any brushes on his knees.  So the first honey bee now put his proboscis in the flower and he’s got it all plugged up with pollen, and he couldn’t breathe, and he came back out, and he was all stuffed up!  Now according to evolution, that’s why the brushes are on his knees.  He’s got his nose all plugged up and he couldn’t breathe, so there developed brushes on his knees in order to unplug his nose. 

But what I want to know is what kept the first honey bee from suffocating to death when he didn’t have any brushes on his knees while he was waiting for them to develop?  Why didn’t he?  Why bless your heart, God put those brushes on his knees because He knew when His bee stuck his proboscis in that flower, he’s going to get pollen all up his nose.  So God made the brushes on his knees in order to clear out the plugs.  That’s the specific creation of God.

Oh, there’s a million of them!  I want to take just one more of them.  I’m not telling you any exaggeration when I say when you actually begin to look at the hypothetical theory of evolution, it gets ridiculous.  It gets funny.  It gets downright silly.  Yet that is the science of a learned man. 

You know, I’ve learned one thing.  A so-called scientist can be as blind and as biased and as dumb and his compartments can be as closed as the most biased and prejudiced man that ever lived in this world. 

All right, let’s take one more.  Let’s take one more because I’ve got a lot of things I want to say this morning, and we’ve got just a minute left.  Let’s take a cat – a cat.  What a marvelous critter is a cat. 

Now, I say – – I just got through saying – – the basic tenant of evolution is this: that things develop not by any design now.  You know, when you take an animal or a plant and under conditions you try to breed it up, and breed it up, and breed it up, why you’re doing that in every kind of a favorable environment that intelligence can command.

Now remember, evolution is that there’s not any intelligence, and there’s not any design, and there’s not any great Providence from heaven that guides these things, but it’s all done fortuitously.  It’s all done accidentally.  It just happened to be.  It’s by happenstance. 

All right, now let’s take this cat.  You see, the cat as you see him today has an advantage.  And I say the fundamental hypothesis of evolution is this: that these things that come to an advantage are selected by the species coming up – see, starting at a cell and coming up.  And things that are advantageous are acquired and kept and developed, and so they come along and the species comes up. 

Now, it is an advantage to a cat to be able to leap to a height, and he’d be disastrous if he weren’t developed to descend from the height without killing himself.  So it is to the advantage of the cat to be able to leap, let’s say, on the table, and then to descend from the table without breaking himself up.  Now that’s an advantage to a cat if a dog’s after him, why, for him to leap up to a limb or to leap up on the ledge of a rock or something.  Why the dog’s down there, and the cat’s up there.  Now, I can see that.  That is an advantage.  It’s an advantage to the cat to be able to leap.

Now, in order for that cat to be able to leap, there has to be a rearrangement of his entire anatomical structure. I mean all of it.  Now, look at your cat how he is made to leap.  Look at his hind legs.  They’re bent, you know, down, so he can spring up.  And look at his fore legs.  They are straight and solid so that when he comes back down he can brace himself against the thud of his descent.  Or another way to look at it is watch a cat spring up on a table so silent and quiet; watch him as he comes down from the table with a thud.  Now in order for that cat to be able to spring up on the table, there has to be a change in that cat of all of his bones, of his tendons, of his muscles, of the whole arrangement of his hinder extremities.  Now for the cat to be able to descend from the table, there has to be a rearrangement of the entire front of the cat.  His bone structure, his muscles, his tendons – everything has to be rearranged in a different kind of an arrangement for the front of the cat in order for him to do that one thing which is advantageous.

Now, the theory of evolution is this: that in the process of time there came to pass that fortuitously, not by design.  There’s not any designer now in evolution.  It comes just by happenstance.  There came to pass at a time that all of those advantageous situations – the change in the bone structure, the change in the hind limbs, the change in the fore limbs, the change in the muscles, the change in the tendons, the change in the nervous system, the change in the anatomy of the cat – all of those things came about at the same time because if they didn’t, there’d be no advantage to the cat.

Evolution is this:  you’ve got a thing like a pig – looks like a pig, let’s say – and now we’re going to turn that pig into a cat.  We’re going to make that solid earthly creature there on the ground, we’re going to make that thing develop into a cat that is lithesome and light and can spring up on a table. 

Now, for one characteristic to develop in that pig, let’s say, that’d make it leap up on a table wouldn’t do any good.  Just a bone structure change wouldn’t do any good.  He’s got to have a muscle structure change too.  And just a muscle structure change wouldn’t do any good; he’s got to have a change up there in the front end of him just as he has in the back end of him.  It takes all of those changes at the same time before it would be any advantage to this little old thing like a pig that we’re trying to get to evolve into a cat because evolution says that’s the way they developed – was by advantage.  This thing proved to be an advantage, and that proved to be an advantage, and the thing developed according to those advantageous points. 

Now, for this little pig here – or whatever kind of an animal it is that developed into a cat – this little old thing down here on the ground, in order to make it spring up here on the table, at the same time – in order to give it the advantage of height – it had to have a change all over its body at the same time in order to make it do that: change its muscles, change its hind legs, change its front legs, change its tendons, change its whole anatomical structure.

All right, let’s say how many chances there are that all of those changes would have come about just at one time.  There are as many likelihoods of all of those changes in bones and in structure, in muscle, in tendon – there is as much chance that all of that blindly, fortuitously, adventitiously developed at one time and made that animal able to spring up to an advantage – there is as much likelihood that that came to pass at one time and that little old animal there was able to spring, there’s as much likelihood of that happening as if you were to take the letters of an alphabet and throw them up in the air and throw them up in the air and throw them up in the air and they all came down an Aristotelian treatise on Greek drama.

You could throw those letters up in the air, throw them up in the air, throw them up in the air, and let them fall down, but you would do that forever and forever and forever and they would never arrange themselves in the form of a treatise on Greek drama.  They never would.  And you can take the characteristics of a pig that’s on the ground and through the millenniums, and the millenniums, and the millenniums, and the millenniums and the uncounted ages, and you would never have developed in that thing down there that’s like a pig all of those characteristics develop at the same time that would be an advantage to it and make it able to spring up on the table.

It just doesn’t happen, and it is ridiculous!  It goes beyond reason.  It doesn’t commend itself to a man’s mind to say such a thing could happen.  The chances against are in infinity, and it never comes to pass.

God made the cat with his hind legs bent.  God made the cat with his fore legs straight.  God made the cat to spring up on a ledge, on a wall.  God made the cat to be able to descend without destroying itself.  God did that.  And from that day of creation, specific creation, until this, every cat’s given birth to a critter just like himself. 

It’s a cat.  And those cats are more cats, and those cats more cats, and cats, and cats, and cats down through the centuries; and they still cats.  And those pigs are still pigs.  That’s the specific creation of God.  And that’s exactly what God said: after his kind, after his kind.  "And God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth on the earth after his kind" [from Genesis 1:25].  God fixed those biological laws back there in the beginning, and what He did there is seen around us just exactly as God made it in the beginning.

Well, it’s a little introduction to what’s coming to pass.  We are now coming to the evolution of man.  The next verse is: "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" [Genesis 1:27].  Now, I have prepared about, I am preparing about five or six or seven messages on the creation of man and this Christmas season will break into them.  One of them is The Witness of Embryology.  One of them is The Witness of Biology.  One of them is The Witness of Paleontology; on and on.  And I’m not going to get into them until after Christmas.

So for the next I think it’s three Sundays – something like that – we’re going into another area here.  And then after the Christmas season, we’re going to pick it up and talk about the creation of man:  what it means, what it implies, how God did it, how the Lord made us, what God made us for.  Oh, it’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever prepared in my life.

Now, Mr. Souther, let’s sing our song.  And while we sing it, somebody to come down this aisle to put his life in the church or to give his heart to God, while we stand and sing the song, you come and stand by me.