The Witness Of The Animal Kingdom
by Brian Donovan
Men are going to have a rough time at the Judgment trying to justify their disobedience, in view of the fact that from Genesis to Revelation you have a chain of references showing immediate, complete obedience in the animal kingdom. Ignorance will be a lame excuse for any man in the face of lions, birds, and even jackasses with a track record of obedience to the Lord's commands. Won't it be something to see a Yale professor claiming that he didn't know (agnostic), and the Lord brings in a skunk to explain how he walked a couple of miles to get on the ark simply because he was told to by his Creator?
According to Romans 1:19-20, the whole creation sits in front of our eyes as a testimony to the Lord's work. Instead of observing and learning from the animal kingdom, educated men have tried to change the glory of God into an image of his corruptible self (Rom. 1:21- 23). All through the ages men have ignored the obvious lessons shown not only in the Bible, but in the natural creation they see from day to day.
The Bible records a number of incidents where animals carry out the Lord's wishes without hesitation. In Daniel 6, some hungry lions are told to leave God's prophet alone for the night. Because they obey, they are rewarded with a much bigger meal the next day. It is amazing to watch how men react under the same revelation. When Stephen is brought before a council in Acts 6, the men are shown that this is God's man (Acts 6:15–they see the face of an angel!). Their reaction is to stone him anyway, proving that an educated, religious man doesn't have the sense of an untamed lion.
The Lord uses ravens to keep Elijah alive during a famine (1 Kings 17), yet He cannot depend on rich American Christians to keep missionaries on a foreign field, preaching the gospel. He tells some jackasses to get lost in the field so that Saul can be anointed by Samuel (1 Sam. 9), but has trouble getting Peter to go to a lost Gentile (Acts 10). Beasts sing and give glory to God before His throne during the great Tribulation (Rev. 4:8), while men on earth refuse to repent and give up their fornication and murder (Rev. 9:20- 21). The Lord has always had more trouble with men than with His brute creation. If Darwin was right and you came from a lemur, man has degenerated from when he was an animal. Unless, of course, you believe that disobedience to God is progress.
I realize that we are living in a time when man has found a myriad of "scientific" reasons why he cannot believe the Biblical account, but the Lord has given him ample chance to see and believe. Thou art inexcusable, O man; you will give an account of what you know in your heart in spite of what you say with your mouth. Luther Burbank, who studied and experimented with plants all his life, ignored what his own experiments proved (you can mix all you want, but you cannot create a new species). Instead of giving glory to God, he rejected the revelation given and said, "The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me–the ravings of insanity …. I prefer and claim the right to worship the infinite, everlasting, almighty God of this universe as revealed to us gradually, step by step, by the demonstrable truths of our savior, science."
In 1926, Burbank found out the hard way that science is no savior. He died. If only he had gone to Job 12 and believed his laboratory. "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?"
Be honest. Can you look at the flight of the falcon, the path of the dolphin, or the birth of your child and believe that it all was once a paramecium? Who doesn't know that the hand of the Lord has done all this? He has created you for His glory, and gave His Son, Jesus Christ, so you can enjoy eternity forever in His presence. As Burbank, you have a right to worship the god you please, but know this: "Thou art inexcusable, O man."