By Randy Alcorn
Eternal Perspectives Ministry
Oregon headquartered ministry
Think of the spectacular creativity and amazing features God put into His creation, including the full variety of animals, which are said to convey His attributes to us (Romans 1:20).
Animals declare God’s glory, yet the vast majority of people who’ve ever lived have never seen—or in many cases even heard of—all the animals that exist. Those of us who happen to know a few hundred species, or even a few thousand, know only a tiny fraction of the total.
While I was researching my forthcoming book on animals, I learned about a new spider species, or a significant variation on an existing one, that was discovered in the Amazon jungle in Peru. An on-the-spot video preserves the dialogue between a group of researchers as they are in the dark and discover what appears at first to be a very large spider in a web. But something’s not right . . . the large spider seems fake. Close-up you can clearly see the debris that makes up the image of a spider; it not only has eight legs but their distinctive shape. And on another web nearby a second spider has done the same. And a tiny real spider vibrates the web. You can hear in the team’s voices both the initial skepticism and the thrill of discovery of something they’d never heard nor conceived of. This is part of the dialogue:
“Dude, is that a fake spider that that thing makes? . . . it may have actually made a fake spider out of debris.”
“Nooooo!”
“I’m not even kidding.”
“What’s making it move?”
“There’s a little spider making it move.”
“I’ve never ever seen that.”
“It’s a tiny spider disguised as a big spider!”
“Shut up.”
“Eight legs. Correct number of legs on the fake.”
“No. There’s no way.”
“He’s vibrating it to make it look bigger. Is that what’s happening?”
One researcher says, “This doesn’t seem like it could be true.”
Well, it turns out it is true. The two large fake spiders made by two tiny spiders don’t just have eight legs, they also have a thorax and an abdomen. But how do they even know what they look like, and where did they get the artistic ability to make large scale images of themselves to scare off birds and other predators? The answer is, they know thanks to their Creator, the same one who gives them their artistic ability and instincts.
This is but a miniscule taste of why the New Earth will never get boring. The vast majority of fascinating scientific discoveries that will ever be made have not yet been made, and have hardly begun to be. And I believe a very large share of those discoveries will be centered in God’s animal kingdom. They will enlarge our knowledge, fascinate us, and arouse our curiosity to make new discoveries, all the while increasing our knowledge of God and magnifying our worship of His wisdom, beauty, and greatness.
“You are worthy, O Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power.
For you created all things,
and they exist because you created what you pleased”
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