Creation Reveals God’s Character

Creation Reveals God’s Character

Adapted from A Matter of Days, second expanded edition

The Bible affirms that God’s handiwork displays His character. The universe proves God’s existence and identity as Creator, His character attributes such as love, power, righteousness, justice, and wisdom, and His role as provider, teacher, and protector.

Honest investigation of nature leads to discovery of truths, including truths about God and His otherwise invisible character qualities. People are “without excuse” because the physical universe is trustworthy. God could not remain consistent with His character and hold people accountable for their response to revelation in the creation if, indeed, nature presents a distorted message.

God’s character must be kept in mind when considering creation’s timing. Natural objects, scientifically analyzed, will reveal their true age—provided the analysis is theoretically valid, correctly applied, and properly evaluated. For created things to show a deceptive appearance of age would violate God’s own stated character and purpose.

The Bible says God created Adam and Eve with adult-sized bodies and adult capabilities. Nowhere does it hint that God implanted several years of deterioration in their newly formed bodies. Adam and Eve were made, not born. Reliable age indicators for humans do exist—liver spots, muscle tone, visual acuity, memories, etc. Using these age indicators would have revealed Adam and Eve’s initial lack of physical aging.

Because Adam and Eve are unavailable for accurate age testing, their bodies cannot be used as evidence to support apparent (but unreal) age. The universe and Earth are available, however. The abundant and consistent evidence from astronomy, physics, geology, and paleontology can and must be considered.

God’s revelation via creation does not detract from Scripture’s importance. Nor does belief in the trustworthiness of nature’s message imply that God never intervenes in the natural realm by performing miracles. It does mean that when He performs such miracles God does not remove, hide, or distort physical evidence for them.