A divine watchmaker, a serpent in the desert

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Let us think about the task of producing a working watch for a moment.

Our first step would require planning, design and blueprints. Only then could we design and create the machines to forge and produce each individual part needed to assemble a watch.  All of the miniature springs, gears and movements will have to be designed and built to extreme tolerances. Now supposing we take all these brand new parts and throw them out into a field. How many millions of years of evolution would go by before they accidentally assemble themselves into a functional watch?

Let us think about the task of producing a working watch for a moment.

Our first step would require planning, design and blueprints. Only then could we design and create the machines to forge and produce each individual part needed to assemble a watch.  All of the miniature springs, gears and movements will have to be designed and built to extreme tolerances. Now supposing we take all these brand new parts and throw them out into a field. How many millions of years of evolution would go by before they accidentally assemble themselves into a functional watch?

Creationists believe that our universe had a beginning and will also have an end. They admit to seeing inescapable elements of design in the sub-atomic world, in our own world and the entire universe in which we live. There are too many aspects of design literally all around us. Obvious evidence that the watchmaker was not blind, but indeed can see beyond the physical limits of time and space! The following story is an example of how God inspired 40 different authors to write 66 books over a period of 2,000 years and still manage to maintain literary consistency.

When I was about 15 years old I began a search for the truth. I remember my search eventually landed me at the foot of the cross. I went forward to receive Christ (I made a public confession) at the altar of a worship service at Scott Memorial East in El Cajon, California. I began to study the Bible only to be frustrated with such a large book filled with names I could not pronounce, places I had never heard of and stories I did not understand. One example is found in the gospel of John 3:1-21.

In this story, Jesus is talking to a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  He has come to Jesus by night, under the cover of darkness to hide his identity, to hear what God wanted to say to mankind. Jesus tells him that unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God, to which Nicodemus responds “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus explains that a man must first be born into the physical world through the flesh, and then born into the spiritual world through the Spirit in order to see the kingdom of God. In John 3:14 Jesus uses an Old Testament prophecy hidden within the writings of Moses to illuminate the answer for Nicodemus.

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Now, if you have taken the time to study this story in Numbers 21:9, which was written by Moses 1500 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, you will see evidence showing that God inspired this prophecy to point to a future moment in time.

The children of Israel had been wandering around in the desert grumbling and complaining. So the Lord sent fiery serpents that bit the people and many died. The people repented and asked Moses to pray for God’s intervention. God instructed Moses to make a fiery serpent and place it on a pole and when someone was bitten, if they looked up to the serpent on the pole, they lived.

It is both interesting and at the same time very odd that God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and had him place it on a pole to be lifted up. The serpent represented the original sin from the Garden of Eden while the bronze it was made from represented judgment, so together it was symbolic of “sin judged.”

Now, 1500 years later, Jesus is making reference to this Old Testament story and, at the same time, Nicodemus is asking basically, “How a man must be saved?”

Jesus is pointing out to him and to all of us that in a few short days, He himself would be nailed to a wooden pole and then lifted up to die for the sins of the world; and as many who would choose to look up to Him, believe in Him, would be saved!

Our Divine watchmaker even inspired His-story to be written in advance so that in hearing, we might believe in the provision of His Son. All who confess with their mouth and believe in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead is saved!