God of Creation: Elephants

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delaney, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-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.

All right, here we go again today with the preaching of the Cross Radio broadcast.

I'm Brother James.

I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is, of course, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.

And we thank you for tuning in today.

We continue on on the broadcast today with our series of messages, series of lessons, if you will, entitled The God of Creation.

And this will be the nineteenth lesson in this series as we are trying to take facts from the world round about us, and we are allowing the beasts of the field to teach us.

We are allowing the sun, moon, and stars to testify of their Creator.

We are allowing the things which God has made, the things which the Lord hath wrought by his mighty power and wisdom, to speak to us, to preach to us, to teach us, if you will, about our God.

We've had uh quite a few lessons which I believe have been very interesting to you.

I know they have been to me, and I I think they have been to you as well.

We've talked about uh honeybees and waterworks, the plant world, uh we've talked about atmosphere and atoms, we've talked about chromosomes and uh radio waves, whales, kangaroos, bats, beavers, lions, atheists, the invisible things of God.

And and you know, it's just an amazing thing.

I I've said this before in other contexts, but I'll say it again here today.

All truth, all genuine truth points to the Godhead.

All genuine truth will point you to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Because after all, uh God Himself is truth.

The Lord Jesus Christ said of himself, I am the way, the truth, the life.

No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

So truth is truth wherever we find it, and wherever we find it, uh the truth will point us to our God and to our creator.

And that's been our purpose on this series of broadcasts entitled The God of Creation.

Now, today let's talk about the world's largest animal, the world's largest animal, and then if we have time, we'll talk about one particular aspect of this animal, and that is the fact that it has the largest nose in all the world.

You know, there's nothing in all today's living world that is the least like an elephant.

In most respects it stands quite alone.

Its huge size, its straight pillar-like limbs, its short neck, its enormous head, carried quite horiz uh horizontally, and above all, its wonderful elastic and sensitive trunk all make of it something to marvel at.

An animal that looks as if it's well, it it just looks out of place in our world.

Looks like a survivor of long past ages.

Elephants are now to be found only in the hotter parts of Asia, the Indian jungles, Ceylon, Sumatra, a few other islands, and in the wilds of Central Africa.

Remains of an interesting race of pygmy elephants, many of them no larger than sheep, have been found in the islands of Malta and Cyprus, but very, very few of these remain in the world today, if any at all.

The prehistoric form of elephant about which we know most is the mammoth, which was about the size and type of the Indian elephant, but was covered with a thick coat of short reddish wool, interspersed with long black hairs.

Its bones and teeth have been found all over England, the north of Europe, North America, and in the remotest islands of the Arctic seas.

Pictures of it have been found on the walls of caves and carved by man's hand on the ivory of its own tusks.

So abundant are the heaps of bones and teeth in certain locations that a trade in fossil ivory has been carried on for more than two centuries, for these mammoths bore a fine pair of large curved tusks, and in spite of the outcry of the uh environmentalists of our day and age and the animal rights activists of our day and age, this trade continues to flourish in a black market setting.

In addition to these heaps of remains, several whole animals have been found in an upright position, well below the surface of the ground in northern Siberia.

They seem to have sunk bodily into a marsh or to have been suddenly overwhelmed by a landslide accompanied by a sudden change from a mild climate to one of intense cold.

The bodies have been so preserved in many instances by being so continuously frozen that no decomposition is set in.

There are two kinds of elephants, the Indian, or Asiatic, and the African.

The Indian form is the smaller of the two, but a full-grown male stands from nine to eleven feet high at the shoulders.

His great body is covered with a thick, much wrinkled skin, having only a few sparse hairs.

The folds of skin afford a favorite feeding ground and hiding place for many insects, so that the elephants are often seen with many insect-eating birds on their backs.

The birds get quite comfortable living in this way, and the elephant is glad to accommodate them because of the comfort and relief they bring from the annoyance of his parasites, unwelcome visitors getting a free ride and a parking place on the back of the packoderm.

The elephant's neck is very powerful, but so short that no great range of movement by the huge head is possible.

The head in turn must be strong enough to bear the weight of the heavy tusks and have a large enough surface for the insertion of the great muscles needed to move the trunk.

The animal often uses the bony part of the head above the trunk to push over things, or as a kind of battering ram.

Here we find a strange and evidently designed feature to present injury to the brain when using the head in this way.

There's a large space, more than a foot in extent, behind the strong outer layer of bone in front of the brain, which is entirely filled with a network of air spaces, separated by very thin bony plates.

Similar air cells are found in the bones of the nose and jaw, and they all communicate with each other, and ultimately with the nostrils, so that air can penetrate all of them.

Thus the enormous head is really not so heavy as it looks, and it is not at all a vulnerable part of the animal, for a bullet aimed at the forehead loses itself harmlessly in the labyrinth of air spaces without entering the brain.

Now how did this happen?

Who designed this airbag for the elephant to cushion the brain and prevent it from injury in head-on collisions?

What a marvelous thing this is that someone could see and consider this, someone could know the truth of this and still claim to be an evolutionist.

I wonder how many elephants knocked their brains out before one of them by chance developed this network of air pockets nearly a foot in extent, to cushion and protect the brain.

I wonder which elephant, after dashing its brains against the tree, had brains enough to develop this in its unborn infant that it was carrying within its womb.

No, my friend, it takes too much faith to be an evolutionist.

We'll have to believe in God.

The front milk or in scissor teeth of the young elephant are shed at an early age, and their place is taken by the tusks which go on growing throughout life and often in the male reach a very large size.

Those of the female are shorter and less curved.

These tusks are made of fine elastic dentine with just a tip of enamel, which is soon rubbed off.

The dentine is the valuable ivory of commerce.

The elephant uses his tusks for many purposes, rooting up plants, piercing or holding down an enemy, or supporting a heavy weight held in position by the trunk.

He is always careful to keep them from being broken.

There's no dentist for him to supply him with any satisfactory substitute if he breaks one of these important teeth, he's just going to have to do without it.

The trunk, or probiscus, gives the elephant its chief distinction.

This wonderful organ is a prolongation of the nose, which, however, takes in part of the upper lip.

It is a long, straight tube divided down the middle, very elastic and mobile, being made up of rings of muscle, very sensitive and well supplied with nerves.

The extremity ends in a finger like projection which rivals in delicacy the trained fingers of a blind man.

This trunk serves all the purposes of a hand, an arm, and a lip as well.

With it he tears up the juicy plants upon which he loves to feed and puts them into his mouth.

With it he can break down the branches of a tree and strip them of bark and leaves.

If he so desires, he can even trim a branch into a fan and use it to drive off the flies that torment him ceaselessly by day.

With it he drinks, filling it with water, curving it around, and squirting the liquid into his mouth.

The value of the trunk to the element or elephant is almost incredible.

He can with it pluck a blade of grass, or pick up a minute object from the ground.

Without its aid, the huge creature would soon starve, for the short, thick neck would not permit him to graze, the projecting tusks would hinder him from reaching vegetables growing at the level of the mouth, and as water could not be drawn into the mouth without the use of this hose-like trunk, thirst alone would speedily put an end to his existence.

In order to support the enormous weight which rests upon them, the legs are very stout, and are set perpendicularly without the joint in the hind leg which is found in most animals.

This pillar-like structure is of infinite use when the animal climbs up or down steep places.

It does this with marvelous ease.

Considering its bulk, the elephant is remarkably active.

It can lie down and regain its feet as easily as a dog.

It can stand upon the hind feet alone or lift itself upon its forefeet, and it can even stand on its head.

It cannot trot or gallop, but when necessary, it can travel at a speed of eight or ten miles an hour.

Its longest stride is six and a half feet, but it cannot jump an inch.

The elephant is a very powerful swimmer, and a herd will cross a broad river swimming for several hours at a time with only the tip of the trunk above the water.

The Indian elephant has its home in the great jungles along the foot of the Himalayas, and elsewhere throughout India, the Malay Peninsula, and some of the larger islands.

Usually they live in family parties of twenty to forty, but sometimes several of such herds unite together for a time.

The herd is always under the leadership of an old tusker who demands and receives unquestioning obedience.

The females and young ones lead the way in marching, the males bringing up the rear.

In spite of their great size and strength, they are very peaceable among themselves and towards other animals and man, whom they rarely attack.

Existence depending largely on this soft and tender trunk, the elephant is bound to keep the peace with all creatures.

He takes the greatest care of this organ, knowing apparently that he cannot live without it.

Elephants are wholly vegetarian, and although they have their favorite food plants, nothing in the way of grasses, leaves, or even young branches comes amiss to them.

Herds of elephants are constantly in search of new feeding grounds.

Usually they march after dark and may travel far up the mountainsides.

They climb very skillfully and carefully, the leader testing every rock and tree trunk, the rest following in single file.

Whether in the plains or on the mountainsides, the one thing that seems absolutely indispensable is abundant water for drinking and bathing.

A female elephant usually has one calf every two years.

This baby is about three feet high at birth and continues to grow for twenty five years.

It sucks with the mouth in the usual way, keeping the trunk folded back.

The calf develops rapidly and a few hours after birth is able to move along with the herd.

At first it walks directly in front of the mother, who guides it by laying her trunk along its back, but when a little stronger, the calf runs under her body and will always retreat there at the slightest alarm.

In swimming, the young one is either supported by the trunk of the mother or may be carried more conveniently on her back.

Something I'd never have never seen, but I certainly would like to.

Now the African elephant is a good deal larger than his Asian cousins.

His ears cover a much greater area, his tusks are heavier and rather more curved, while his trunk has two finger-like projections, one at either end.

One thing which strikes us in our survey of animals in general in this study is the endless variety in construction, in size, in instincts, in manner of life, and various other features, but there are always certain things held in common.

All animals have the desire to live, even if it be at the expense of others.

Most animals exhibit real solicitude towards their young.

All mothers are equipped with the necessary bodily parts required for feeding the more or less helpless young.

The newly born animals know where to go for nourishment and exactly what to do to get it.

The anatomical arrangement of bones, muscles, joints, and organs is of greatest interest, each animal having its own peculiar and special gifts adapted to its needs and environment.

All these things indicate a powerful God above, above and beyond the animal itself, because they come into existence with all these powers ready to be utilized.

And this must have been true from the very beginning.

We are constantly driven back to our first conclusion.

In the beginning, God created.

The evidence of a creator is so abundant and conclusive that one can scarcely understand the attempt to shelve this omnipotent source of all things and to be satisfied with a wholly imaginary and inoperative theory which prefers to accept the most astonishing miracles in anatomical change without any miraculous power to bring them about.

Of course, creation is a miracle.

We do not deny that.

But rather we derive much satisfaction from the conviction that the power of God is needed, and that this power of God has manifested itself in most unmistakable ways.

I don't know about you, but personally I'm more thankful every day for the knowledge I have of God and for the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Why should I be ashamed of him?

With Paul, we can say, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto him that believeth.

Now I don't know about you, but you can uh let a scientist laugh at me all day long if you want to.

But I can see clearly the hand of God.

I can see clearly the power of God when I look at the great and marvelous things that God created.

And you know, you can look all day and all night, and you won't see the hand of Charlie Darwin anywhere.

Amen.

Now this this elephant, I I think we need to take a closer look at this marvelous uh feature.

We've been thinking about this elephant, and we talked in an earlier lesson about the bat and other animals, and each of them have strange equipment and powers.

And it's amazing how that they all have something that really seems to identify them and make them stand out in the creation.

The short unbending neck of the elephant, as we've talked about, is compensated by the length and flexibility of the trunk.

He could not have reached the ground without it, or if it be supposed that he might have fed on the fruit, leaves, or branches of trees, how is he to drink?

We know that water is absolutely indispensable in large quantities to this mammoth creature, and we have to ask, uh, why is the elephant's neck so short?

Well, the answer is that the weight of the head, being so heavy, it could not have been supported at the end of a long lever.

Consequently, a supplement is added which exactly makes up for the deficiency under which he would have labored.

And that's the trunk.

If it be suggested that the elephant's trunk may have been produced through a long series of generations by the constant attempts of the elephant to thrust out his nose, we ask the natural question, how was the animal to exist in the meantime?

During the process, until this prolongation of the snout be completed?

What was to become of the individual while the anatomical changes were being evolved?

Undoubtedly, had the elephant not been created originally with this great long trunk, there would have been a speedy death to every elephant.

Now I'm trying to point out the relation which this organ bears to the peculiar feature of the animal, and to its mode of obtaining food to supply its bulky frame, which is not only by browsing on grass, but also on the foliage of trees.

And here all things correspond.

The need for the elephant's trunk arises from the shortness of his neck.

The shortness of the neck is rendered necessary by the weight of the head.

This long nasal projection is one of the most curious of all examples of animal mechanism.

As we've discussed already, it is tubular, endowed with enormous muscular power, and with a most delicate sensitiveness at its extremity.

With its uh by using it, I should say, the elephant can gather food.

It can run large branches of trees, or, with a delicate finger like end, it can pick up a straw or even a penny from the ground.

It is the hand by which food and drink are conveyed to the mouth, and the pump with which it can syringe its huge body.

It is also a weapon of defense with which it can crush in its powerful grasp whatever it seizes or hurl an enemy to the ground, to be gored with its long tusks or trampled to death beneath its ponderous feet.

These properties, all found in this one organ, taken together, exhibit not only design of the most marked character, but consummate art and elaborate preparation in accomplishing that design.

Now we talked earlier about the bat.

The hook in the wing of this mammal is a mechanical and also a compensating contrivance.

At the angle of its wing, attached to its short thumb, there is a bent nail or claw, exactly in the form of a hook, by which the bat attaches itself to the sides of rocks, caves, and buildings, laying hold of crevices, chinks, and slight projections.

It hooks itself by this claw and remains suspended by it and takes its flight from this position.

It is easily seen that this strange device compensates for the inability of the legs to assist in standing or walking.

These lacks, or failures, if we dare to call them such, are made up to the bat by the wing contrivance in the form of the hook.

In placing a claw on that part, the creator has deviated from that which is observed in winged animals, but has thus supplied it with the means of roosting and safety.

If we were to consider the birds, we would think a moment of the crane, a bird created to live and seek its food among the waters.

Cranes have no webbed feet, and so are incapable of swimming.

To make up for this lack, they are furnished with long legs for wading, or long bills for groping, or usually with both.

This again is compensation.

The tongues of birds, they're not constructed as organs of taste, which, since as we have discussed in another lesson, is imperfectly developed in this class.

Birds are specially employed in obtaining and preparing their food for swallowing.

For this purpose, the tongue is supported by two small bones extending upward from the hyoid, H Y O I D, a U-shaped bone at the base of the tongue.

The tongue also is provided with a thick horny covering.

In the parrot, the tongue can be opposed to the hooked upper jaw, or you could picture it as our thumb is set in opposition to the fingers.

In birds which feed on honey, the tip of the tongue is given a feathery tuft, like a camel's hairbrush, by which it gathers its food.

The tongue of the woodpucker is prolonged into a sharp lance, by which it reaches and pierces its prey, an arrangement aided by the very sticky saliva poured out between the uh point or beneath the point of the tongue.

The parrot's beak is not adapted for picking up grain, but is strong enough to crush hard substances, and the hook in it helps admirably in climbing.

The spider's web is a compensating contrivance.

The spider lives on flies, but has no wings to pursue them.

This seems to present the spider with an insurmountable difficulty, but the resourcefulness of the creator of the spider, without any thinking or effort of the animal, overcomes this handicap in a most delightful and successful fashion.

In many species of insects, the eye is fixed, and so without the power of turning in the direction of the object to be looked at.

However, this great defect is perfectly compensated by a curious mechanism.

The eye becomes a magnifying glass, with a lens looking in every direction, enabling the retina to catch rays from every object.

In the eyes of flies, butterflies, and other insects, the field of vision is enlarged by the presence of thousands of six-sided facets, each a perfect eye, with cornea, lens, iris, and pupil.

This is surely not the result of any possible chance operation.

In the chameleon, instead of there being two eyelids, the eye is covered with one eyelid with a hole in it.

This is wonderfully compensatory.

The neck of the animal is And to make up for this, the eye is so prominent that half of the eyeball stands out of the head, and by means of this extraordinary projection, the pupil of the eye can be carried by the muscles in every direction, and each eye separately is capable of being pointed toward any object.

On one side the chameleon looks in one direction, and on the opposite side in an entirely different direction.

The unusual exposure of the globe of the eye is dangerous.

So an additional protection is required to prevent injury, and provision must be made for plenty of moisture.

So what do we find?

The pronounced convexity of this projecting organ makes it impossible to use an eyelid formed according to the general plan.

So the aperture in the single lid meets the difficulty.

The principal part of the eye may be kept covered, and the constant moisture is possible.

Where at first glance we notice apparent defects, we always come upon some notable contrivance to provide exactly what is lacking.

A snail has no wings, no feet, no thread, and yet it climbs up the stalks of plants by the aid of a sticky secretion manufactured in its skin.

It easily adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits of plants by means of this adhesive plaster.

A fly can walk on the ceiling because it has suckers on its feet.

The muscle, a small bivalve mollusk, seems to be very helpless and at the mercy of every wave that touches it.

But it has been equipped with the ability to spin strong tendinous spreads by which it moors its shell to rocks and timbers.

A lobster, when we examine it, seems to be hopelessly handicapped for increasing its size.

The lobster's shell is a protecting covering and is also an attachment for muscles.

It is too hard to expand with increasing growth of the lobster, so the shell must be discarded or the animal will be squeezed to death.

How can it extricate itself from its confinement?

How can it uncase its buckler or draw its legs out of its boots?

Usually in the autumn, the animal retires to a secluded place where the shell loosens as a soft covering develops beneath the old shell.

It works desperately and by tremulous spasmodic motions casts off the shell, and then withdraws the legs from their casing.

The now defenseless animal retires to a hole in a nearby rock, while a new and larger shell of the proper size to accommodate it grows and develops and hardens in a few days.

The shells of crustaceans are very brittle, and limbs are easily broken and detached, a most serious complication one would think.

But this defect is compensated by another remarkable provision, which makes possible the production of an entirely new limb in the place of the one lost.

Examples like these are so numberless, and I think I would have to say with you, they're more than interesting.

They are remarkable.

Now I know, I know that we've said this before, but we've got to say it again.

This is a great truth.

It's mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible that there must be a personal God who is an intelligent creator.

Now, we cannot, we must not ignore this.

If we do, and we have ignored it in the past as a nation, we must expect judgment of the severest kind.

We've seen devastating wars, we've seen hunger and starvation and famine in the world round about us.

Many causes are assigned for the troubles in the world today, and people constantly ask why God permits such dreadful things to go on.

It's argued that an omnipotent creator, righteous and holy and peace-loving, if there be such a being, has apparently forgotten this world or does not care.

And the question comes, why does God not put an immediate stop to all the problems in this world?

My friends, God doesn't bring about wars, God doesn't bring about death, God doesn't bring about heartache.

It is caused by the sin of mankind, universal and defiant sin.

There's but one way out, and that is the way of confession and humiliation, a way which unregenerate nations are loath to travel.

God's warnings have been disregarded, and as the result, we have terror and death surrounding the globe, circling the globe in all nations today.

In Amos chapter 3, verses 10 and 11, these words, they know not to do right.

Amos 3:10

Therefore, thus saith the Lord, an adversary shall there be even round about the land, and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy dwelling places shall be spoiled.

My friends, God made provision for the elephant.

God made provision for the bat.

God made provision for the crane.

God made provision for the parrot.

God made provision for the mussel.

God made provision for the chameleon, the butterfly, and the lobster, and my dear friend, God has made provision for you.

That provision is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He came into this world, suffered, bled, and died on Calvary's cross to make a full and complete payment for sin.

He rose from the dead and offered to all who would receive him and believe upon him the forgiveness of sins and eternal, everlasting life as a free gift from Almighty God.

Now, my dear friend, I ask you, what will you do with this provision that your Creator has made for the salvation of your soul?

I encourage you, show more intelligence than the natural brute beasts who have to have everything done for them by God without an act of their will or their choosing, because they have no sense, they have no mind, they have no intellect with which to make a choice.

But God has given you a mind, God has given you a brain, God has given you a heart, God has given you a will.

And I plead with you, I ask you, I beg you to choose the Lord Jesus Christ, to take it upon yourself, the responsibility of repenting of your sin and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

He is the provision that God has made for you.

Thanks for tuning in today.

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Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptistoland, or our website, BibleBaptistoland.com.

Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.