God of Creation: Honeybees (Part 2)

A honey bee can turn honey into wax, build a heat-resistant vault for “liquid gold,” and run a nursery that feeds larvae hundreds of times a day. That kind of precision forces a question we cannot dodge: does a world this coordinated really come from nothing and no one?

We walk through the hive like a tour of living engineering, from pollen and propolis to the exacting process of beeswax production and the six-sided honeycomb. Then we zoom in on “bee babies,” royal jelly, and the mysterious timing of development, including abilities that appear for one stage of life and then disappear. Along the way, we connect these observable wonders to a larger claim about origins: design points to a Designer.

From the natural world, we shift to a different kind of evidence. We argue that the Bible is not simply inspiring religious literature but the Word of God, marked by authority, unity, and an endurance that has outlived critics, regimes, and fashion. The message of Scripture centers on Jesus Christ, and we state plainly what the Bible demands: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

If you care about creation vs evolution, intelligent design, Christian apologetics, and the gospel of Jesus Christ, this conversation will challenge you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the message and join the discussion.

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Transcript

Honey Bee Wax And Hive Design

From Bee Wonders To Bible Wonder

Bee Nursery Royal Jelly And Built-In Skill

Is The Bible God’s Word

Why Scripture Outlasts Its Critics

Stand On Christ And Find More

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Well, thank you again so very much for those kind words of introduction. I'm Brother James, and thank you for tuning in once again today to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. This is a Bible-believing radio broadcast where we spend thirty minutes discussing with you the truth of the Word of God. Normally, our broadcasts are very scriptural. We've turned to many, many verses in the Bible and uh discuss them and uh consider them as we talk about different uh matters pertaining to uh salvation and talk about uh matters pertaining to the person of God as revealed in the Bible. This is a uh kind of a different uh series of programs, different than anything we've ever done before, in that we are spending a great deal of time discussing science rather than the Bible. Uh we believe that the Bible uh speaks truthfully where it speaks of science, where it speaks of humanities, where it speaks of uh anthropology, where it speaks of eschatology, whatever subject the Bible addresses, it always speaks truthfully. But there's so much opposition to the Bible raised in the world today on the part of science, falsely so called, first Timothy chapter six and verse twenty, that uh we thought we'd do well to take a series of broadcasts and discuss with you how that nature, how that uh the animals, the plants, the solar system, how it proves that any reasoning man, how it proves that any intelligent man must recognize a creative hand behind all that he sees with his eye. We talked on the last broadcast about the honey bee. We talked about the bee's knees, that is the fantastic way that a bee is able to clean its uh antennae with uh devices that God has placed in its legs. We uh talked about the uh uh bee, their ability to uh fly with either uh two uh sets of wings or how they can attach these uh sets of wings together and form one rather large set of wings. And we considered the well, let's just say it this way, the strange mechanical equipment of the honey bee, as well as the process by which honey is manufactured by these skilled chemists. In addition to honey, the bee's mind, if we think of it as having a mind, is intent on two other things pollen dust or flour and propolis, or bee glue. You remember we talked about that last time? The pollen gathered daily by bees as they enter and leave the flowers is literally gold dust to them. Rich in protein, it is fed to the workers in the summer colony. The fertilization of plants depends principally on the work of these busy bees, and if they were to be destroyed, there would be a famine in the land. So the omniscient creator, almighty God, with great wisdom has planned that these tiny insects should be indispensable to mankind. Profilus, the dark colored bee glue, with which they fill cracks and smooth over rough places within the hive, is gathered from the gums of buds, plants, and trees. It is a most effective varnish, and yet the bee never seems to have any difficulty in preventing itself from becoming stuck up with it. Another product of the chemical factory of the bee is wax. This very interesting material, so essential to hive making, is manufactured from its body after it has gorged itself with honey. Six or seven pounds of honey are required to make one pound of wax. After a series of exact preparations by the inmates of the hive, the purpose of which seems to be to generate sufficient heat as their movements reach a vigorous stage, the wax, secreted from four tiny factories on each side of the abdomen of the bee, appears as a small thin flake. Uh looks like fish scales, actually. Each scale is removed by the hind pair of legs, carefully transferred to the middle pair, and then to the mouth where it is mixed with saliva and changed from its first transparent form to the pale yellow color of the finished article. Bees wax is unlike anything else in the world. It contains a fatty acid called serin C E R I N, minute quantities of alcohol, mis uh mycerin, or mycin, hydrocarbons and other acid gives the wax its characteristic odor. It floats on water, it is very resistant to heat, and during a temperature of one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit before melting, no other wax has such a high melting point, by the way. The reason for this is easily discerned. The entire store of liquid gold would be lost if the thin walled treasure vaults, the storage chambers, softened under the influence of moderate heat and gave way. In manipulating the wax in order to form the marvelous six sided cells, real mechanical engineering skill is apparent. Without any chief engineer to issue commands, one piece of wax and then another is laid down by the busy workers, a tap here, a dab there, and presently a cell takes shape. What is the explanation of the ability to perform these precise and intricate operations? If it be that the spirit of the hive mentioned by Maternich, is that spirit not the spirit of God, then what could it possibly be? Certainly it cannot be accounted for by thinking that the bee has gradually evolved this skill. If there ever was a time when the bee did not possess this knowledge, all bees would have died. And all men would have died, for the fruits and vegetables would not have been pollinated. The first bees then must have known how to do these things. That means creation, not evolution. Yes, there are many inexplicable wonders wrapped up in the structure and work of the honey bee. We find it difficult to explain these wonders, in fact impossible to explain them without accepting the idea that God made it possible for these tiny life forms to acquit themselves so admirably in the struggle for existence. To an even greater degree we find ourselves faced with an unsolvable dilemma if we attempt to explain the Bible without a supernatural God as its author. The qualifications of the human scribes who produced the sixty six books making up the Bible are wholly inadequate to explain what we find in the pages of this remarkable book. Why here is a book which is the greatest literary possession of the human race, the enduring revelation of God to man. It constitutes the title deed to human institutions. It is the lesson book of Christian faith, the final code of human conduct. Man unaided simply could not originate it. If asked to describe in advance what the Bible of the human race should be, certainly no one would have guessed this particular form. It would be natural to ask if we might not have a book with fewer mysteries and digressions, a book that leaves nothing untold, a book which might be demonstrated like a problem in Euclid, a book of well, that higher critics would not dissolve into a thin mist of wavering dates. A revelation given to all given simultaneously and adequately seems to be what is needed. Well, let's imagine then a committee of philosophers, poets, lawyers, historians, or newspaper writers employed to draw up in advance a plan for the Bible. It is highly probable that such a committee would never have agreed among themselves, but it is certain that if they had, they would have given us a Bible quite unlike the one God has pleased to bestow. The lawyers would have given us a code, the theologians a catechism. The committee of newspaper editors would have provided us with an up to date book, all headlines, some station, and picturesque descriptions. The poets would have given us an epic embroidered with sonnets. The scientists would have made science itself unnecessary by preparing a compendium of all knowledge, the natural history of things in general, a book which would have left the planet without a secret, and the human intellect with nothing to interest it. Unspired human literature presents many differences from this great book. For instance, a fellow named Hoder H O D E R once wrote a book called The Life of the Earl of Shaftsbury. It contains three hundred and sixty thousand words. Mr Morley wrote The Life of Gladstone on a still ampler scale of two stupendous volumes. But for the life of Christ we have four thin pamphlets, much not much larger than tracts, really. Matthew tells the amazing story in twenty three thousand words, and you uh Mark uses only fifteen thousand. In spite of the innumerable attempts at destruction, the Bible lives on. That little arc of Jewish literature floats upon the surges of time, while the wrecked archives of huge oriental empires are turned into mere flotsum and jetsum, that's what Henry Rogers said. How often has the Bible been torn into rags, refuted and destroyed? But the anvil outlasts all the hammers that smite it. The men who attack the Bible, the volumes written to disprove it, are forgotten, while the immortal book lives on, surviving its friends as well as its enemies. Some strange gift of indestructible life is hidden in the Bible. It has to be. History is strewn with the wrecks of a hundred perished literatures, even entire languages. But time has no destroying office for biblical records. Some element not born of human genius lies in its pages and outshines genius. As we said on the last broadcast, other books have their day and die. Their language grows obsolete, the world's thought runs in new channels, and they are left mere stranded wrecks on the shore of time, but this book belongs to all the centuries and it outlives them all. One idea shines behind the many books of the Bible. This idea is the recovery of a fallen race. The instrument of this great process is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is nothing but a frame of historical events in which the face of Jesus Christ is set. All the early books of the Bible prepare for him and point to him, and all the later books look back to him. Under all its forms the Bible is thus the servant of but one idea. Or to vary the figure, the Bible is a portrait. The face of Christ looks out, tender, pure, holy. It may be with varying clearness, but from every page is it credible that sixty two chance daubs of chance colours made without any agreement among themselves by a number of chance men could possibly produce a portrait of a face that not only arrests the attention but stirs the love and hatred of the world, I ask you again. It couldn't be so. Tried by ordinary tests, the Bible is thus the great puzzle of all literature. What is the explanation to the puzzle? The only answer is that the Bible is not the product of human thought. It does not reflect the mind or record the discoveries of man, it reflects the mind of God. It is a channel through which runs a stream of spiritual force. It is not a discovery. No, it's a revelation. The Bible does not argue, it pronounces. It is not concerned to prove by argument the foundations of religion, the existence and holiness of God, the eternal authority of righteousness and the moral nature of man, the fact of sin, and of redemption from the guilt and power of sin, and that the final judgment awaits all human deeds. These things are not argued in the Bible, they are stated in the Bible for man to accept or reject. The Bible assumes these truths and proclaims them as certainties that find their attestation in the soul itself. The Bible offers us not an argument, but a message. It is not man's thoughts about God, but God's thoughts about man. So the note is always one of authority, an authority which cannot be assailed nor challenged because it is final and absolute. God has spoken. In view of this great revelation, it's surely worthwhile to pay attention to the advice given to mankind in the Bible. The message is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. To refuse this declaration by Almighty God is to refuse the only way to heaven. Jesus said of himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me. He said that in John chapter 14 and verse number six. He didn't say, think about this and discuss it and reason among yourselves and decide if you think it's the truth or not. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Now let's think for a few more minutes about these honey bees. What we've already learned about them leaves us with well, with no explanation apart from the fact that an all wise God created them. A gradually evolving insect would be impossible. A gradually evolving instinct to do the things which these insects do would be impossible, for they would not have lived to evolve to this point. They cannot live without doing the things that they do. That would indicate that there was a time when there was nothing. And out of nothing a creator made a honey bee. Let's talk about the bee babies and their nurses. This is rather fascinating to me, and I believe it will be to you. From one thousand to fifteen hundred bee babies are born daily to replace about an equal number of deaths. The feeding of these helpless life forms presents to observers a most interesting phenomenon. A section of the hive is always set apart as the nursery, and it is here that the queen in her daily rounds lays the tiny eggs in specially prepared cells. These eggs hatch at the end of three days, and we see a host of small white forms or grubs lying curled up and fitting accurately and snugly into their six sided rooms. Obviously, nurses are required, and this work is carried out by the newly born members of the colony who exhibit exhibit the most solicitous care for their young family. During the first forty eight hours, every bee baby is fed on what is known as royal jelly, a remarkable food manufactured in the ductless glands of the nurses who seem to be constantly engaged in urging their proteges to eat. Three hundred meals a day are the approximate number of feedings given these rapidly growing children of the hive. The young bees lie literally surrounded by this jelly, and it is kept replenished from the mouths of the attendants. They lean over the edge of the cribs and just continually and constantly see to it that these little ones eat. If a grub born from an egg fertilized by the queen with a male sperm cell were fed continuously during the five day larval period on royal jelly, it would develop into a queen with fully formed female reproductive organs. This is not required except under special conditions, as when the queen is getting too old for her work of egg laying or if she dies. Consequently, except when a queen is wanted, the royal jelly diet ceases at the end of forty eight hours and is replaced by a mixture of honey and pollen dust, the proportions of each ingredient being very carefully measured by the expert nurses who seem to be skilled chemists. Many experiments have shown that this food is mixed and mixed in exact proportions. Here is another instance of surprising and mysterious knowledge, not instinct, but God given knowledge. This change in the food results in the birth of neutral female bees, the workers with which we are so familiar. They perform most of the wonders of the hive and constitute the great mass of the bee population. How the royal jelly brings about the change from the neutral female state to a fully developed queen is not known. It's the secret of the bee, or rather we should say the secret of the god who made the bee. After five days of this intensive feeding, the tiny grub weaves for itself a silken shroud, having been equipped with this ability to produce silk just for this one stage of its existence and never again. The silk factory is discarded in the next and final form, and here a question arises. How does it happen that there is present exactly when needed this silk factory inside the bee's body and then it's discarded and done without? The obvious design at this point suggests Yea cries out for our belief in a designer, a creator. After being surrounded by this silken covering for twelve or fourteen days, there begins to stir into active life an entirely different body, with wings and all the equipment which has been described in our discussion so far. The nurses have capped over the cell where the hatching is taking place, and now this waxen cap is cut, and there slowly emerges a somewhat bedraggled and apparently bewildered addition to the hive. The new member is granted about twenty four hours to become familiar with its new surroundings. She wanders here and there, sniffing and inspecting, drying out her wings and developing the use of her legs and other body structures. Then she begins real work, entering the nursing section without any instruction, but also without any confusion or lack of skill. She proceeds to make royal jelly and feed her sisters who are coming into life just as she did a few hours before. Without benefit of teaching, she is able to perform all the duties of the community with unerring skill and with complete devotion to her life's work, a busy life while it lasts, only a little over a month or six weeks, and again, we've got to ask ourselves if we're honest, where did this astonishing wisdom displayed by this insignificant mass of protoplasm that weighs only one five thousandth of a pound? Where did it come from if it didn't come from God? You know, the psalm writer says in the book of Psalms in the Holy Bible, Psalm number ninety-five, let me turn there and read it to you. Psalm number ninety-five and uh verses two and three. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. The Bible speaks with no uncertain sound as to the source of all these miracles which we are considering in many ways. The Bible is the greatest miracle of all. We shall continue to stress on this program the great truth that this is the book of books, infallible in every part, because inspired in every word by its divine author. Yes. We we feel about the Bible like William Gladstone did when he called the Bible the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture, and on that rock we take our stand. It may be and probably is a fact that there are some listening right now who do not quite agree as to this basic truth that the Bible is the Word of God, and that we can stand upon it, that it's the solid rock upon which we may build. All other ground is sinking sand, and when the rains uh beat down and the floods sweep over, uh there be nothing left of the lives that have been built upon a faulty foundation, but the Bible is a sure and a firm and a strong foundation. Now why do we believe that? Well there people on all sides of the question whether or not it's a true book or a false book, or book of fairy tales, or uh the book that is indeed the Word of God, but some tell us that the Bible's a good book, but others aren't so sure. They say, well, Plato and Socrates, they were good books, and uh Book of Mormon and the Quran is uh a good book, and the Hindus and the Chinese, they certainly have good books, and they're probably all about as inspired as the other, and Shakespeare and Milton and Tom Paine, there have been a lot of great writers. Thomas Jefferson, and we feel they were inspired, but you know, there seems to be a difference. If you read Shakespeare's plays, and I have, none of them opens with the Saith the Lord of hosts. When I turn to Plato's writings, I don't read, Hear ye the Word of the Lord. This book has to be judged by standards different from those which apply to any other book. Either the message of this book is the Word of God or it's a lie. If the Bible is not the Word of God, it's not a good book, it's a book of lies. It is either what it claims to be, or it's a cheat, a swindle, a humbug, it's a total fraud. It can't be both. It can't be a good book and not be the word of God. Some people say that Jesus of Nazareth was a good man, but then say there were others just as good. Well, Jesus said, I came forth from the Father. I came into the world, and I leave the world and go to the Father. And he said, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Now did he speak the truth? When he stood before the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests, and that trial before they let him out to be crucified, and they asked him, they said t they said, Tell us plainly, are you the Son of God? And he looked him right in the eye and he said, I am. Now you know something? If he wasn't God Almighty manifest in the flesh, if he weren't the Son of God come to earth to manifest God to mankind, he wasn't a good man. He was a liar. He was either God manifest in the flesh or he was a liar. You cannot call Jesus a good man and not believe what he said about himself. You cannot call the Bible a good book and not acknowledge that it's the Word of God. It can't be both. You can't have it both ways. Now I don't believe that a book packed with lies from beginning to end is a good book, and I don't believe that Jesus Christ was a good man and the Bible is a good book if they don't tell the truth. But I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was what he professed to be. Now you either accept his claims in their entirety or you have to reject the whole gospel as the imaginations of a fraud, an egomaniac. There's no middle ground. Don't be fooled by this soft talk about the Bible being a good book, and yet it's just like many other books. We got all this stuff going on in our world of religion today telling you there are many ways and many salvations, and as long as you're sincere and as long as you believe sincerely, if you're sincerely wrong, you'd be sincerely dead when you take that medication. If you're sincerely wrong about the light being green instead of red, you can lose your life, you know that. If you are sincerely wrong about the flood warning and the hurricane warning and the tornado warning, you can lose your life. If you are if you're wrong about your choice of religion and faith, you can lose your soul. The Bible is a book which has been refuted, demolished, overthrown, and exploded more times than any other book of which you've ever heard. Every little while someone comes along and upsets it. Entire races of people have been slaughtered because of their faith in the Bible. Some of the largest nations on planet Earth have done everything in their power to exterminate the Word of God and faith in Christianity, and yet the Bible stands just as true and strong today as it ever did. Every little while someone blows up the Bible. But when it comes down, it always lights on its feet and runs farther than ever throughout the world. You remember they overthrew it in Voltaire's time about two centuries and a half ago. They were sure they'd demolish the whole thing. In less than a hundred years, Voltaire sneered, Christianity and the Bible will be swept out of existence and will have passed into history. Well, what happened? For a time infidelity ran riot throughout France, red handed and impious, but the centuries have gone into history now, and Voltaire is only a memory, and not even a very respectable memory, but the Bible stands. You know, they tried for decades to eliminate faith in God in the Soviet Union, and you know something? Faith in God is overthrowing and overturning the tables against all those that fought against it. In Romania, we see it taking place. In Latvia, we see it. In Estonia. Why? Because the Bible says the word of God liveth and abideth forever. Psalm one nineteen, verse eighty nine, forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. As for me, I'm gonna take my stand with this blessed old book. As for me, I'm gonna believe what it says, that I'm a sinner. As for me, I'm gonna believe what it says, that there's only one payment for my sin, that's the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ when he laid down his life on Calvary's cross and paid for my transgression. As for me, I'm gonna believe that Jesus rose from the dead because the Bible says so. As for me, I'm going to believe that Jesus Christ is alive right now, seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, ready, able, and willing to save all that will humble themselves and call upon his holy name, believing upon him as their personal Lord and Savior. You know there's been an awful lot of men that have fought against the Word of God, and they haven't lived to see victory. But the Bible is still the living word of the living God. It's still life changing to this very day. Oh, you know it's a wonderful and marvelous thing what God made when he made that honey bee. It's a wonderful and marvelous thing what God made when he made you. And in spite of all the sin and all the rebellion, God can perform a still greater work of creation. He can create in you a new heart, he can born you again and give you a new life. If you'll humble yourself and call upon him, trust him. Believe, the Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, JamesW. Our terminal audio page, Bible Baptistal Land, or our website, BibleBaptistaland.com. Until next time, and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.