God of Creation: Bees and Plants

A beehive hums with more than motion, it hums with order. We start with honey bees and the shockingly coordinated life of the hive: specialized roles, perfect timing, and honeycomb architecture so efficient it makes you wonder where the “know-how” comes from. Then we follow a bigger question that sits underneath all of it: when thousands of creatures behave like one body toward one end, are we really looking at blind mechanism, or at purpose built into creation?

From the hive we move to the field, where flowers and pollinators depend on each other in ways that are hard to brush off as coincidence. Wind-pollinated plants skip nectar and scent, while insect-pollinated flowers use color, markings, and sweetness like signals to guide bees straight to the reward. That bee is just trying to gather nectar for honey, yet it carries pollen that keeps whole species alive. We even trace how pollination can ripple into agriculture and national prosperity, showing how tightly the natural world is interlocked.

We close by connecting creation to revelation. If nature points to an almighty Creator, we still need God’s word to know Him personally, and we turn to the Bible’s testimony and to Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. If you’ve ever asked what creation says about God, what Scripture claims about itself, or how salvation works, this broadcast speaks directly to you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review that tells us what part of the argument challenged you most.

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

SPEAKER_01 0:54

And thank you for that introduction. A very pleasant good day to each and every one of you. I'm Brother James, and I welcome you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. This program is uh coming to you over this radio station by the kind courtesy of some uh believers in your area who are in agreement with the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are so very happy to be able to speak to you today on this broadcast. We began uh two programs ago. That is, this will be our third broadcast in a series entitled The God of Creation. We began uh this study with a discussion of the uh honey bee or the world of the bees, and we're going to continue on the program today with our third lesson on uh this matter of the honey bees, really and truly a remarkable uh creature uh made by a remarkable creature. Uh creator. You know, there is another occurrence in nature that is related to instinct and perhaps more mysterious and challenging. It's the matter of adaptation of separate organisms to one another. With little study, you can get the idea of adaptation of eye to light or leaf to tree or oxygen to blood or hand to brain, but it's not so easy to grasp the idea of how the uh an organ of one individual is adapted to another organ in another individual, or how the needs and functions of animals and plants play back and forth, each to the advantage of the other. This is more complex than instinct. It serves to show still further that one and the same intelligence is back of everything, and that some infinite wisdom directs the forces of nature. Now, nobody knows anything about or who knows anything about bees will deny that there's anything more interesting in the world than the activities of the hive. Here's an organization more complex than even that of ants, where each social duty is related to the welfare of all as aptly as the heart is adapted to the lungs or digestion to the blood in other forms of life. Not only does the queen live for the purpose of laying eggs, but the nurse bees attend her, prepare her food, feed her, and look after the young. Not only are certain workers accustomed to bringing nectar from the fields, but hive bees meet them, abstract the sweet, charge it slightly with acid, and store it as honey. Not only is one force employed in making cells and another in filling them, but it is the duty of still another group to cool the wax so that in the heat of summer the hive resounds with a buzz of wings to create a cooling draught. The queen can do nothing but lay eggs, the drones exist for nothing but to fertilize the queen, the workers do nothing but labor. The organization is perfect, but at a cost of almost everything to the individual. Dallas Lore Sharp in his book The Spirit of the Hive, page thirty one, said quote The sacrifice is absolute, no bee escapes, the queen's surrendering will, the worker's sex, the drone his full bounding life, that the state may live and have unhampered being. When a hive swarms every bee accompanies, but what dis decides them and what determines where they shall go? When honey fails for want of nectar in times of drought, the unhatched queens are murdered to prevent the advent of new bees, but whence the united instinct? This is the working of the community mind, the spirit of the hive. The question is why is there but one mind among a thousand individuals? How come such complete agreement? Their cells are six sided, built of wax. They average one two hundred and twenty ninth of an inch in thickness near the base, and the one three hundred and fifty second part of an inch near the border, where the pressure is less. Mathematicians have computed that bees have accomplished precisely the problem of making cells that will hold the most honey with the least consumption of wax, but where did they get this mathematical ability? Their queens are made only when needed. Ordinary worker eggs are placed in large, specially constructed cells treated, and from this common egg comes the queen with a larger body and different anatomical parts than the worker hatched from a like egg. Several such eggs have been prepared, any of which would become a queen, but the first hatched proceeds within a few seconds after birth to her first task, the slaying of all possible queens who might be contestants for the throne. This is done by stinging them to death. Ordinarily the sting costs the bee her life, the stinger of the worker being straight and barbed, so that withdrawing it tears the body beyond repair. But the queen's stinger is curved, and this she inserts with strange precision into the breathing holes of her victims from which it is extracted without difficulty. Then the queen begins her routine, not as ruler, for she is willess to the common good, but as servant of the social body. What economist among men? What statesman or philosopher has devised methods for the people that have been concurred in by all? When is human society with all its power of thought ever pulled together even in a village? The bee has been endowed with something that humans might envy. And here is another unsolved mystery. The sterile female, the worker, is the most diligent toiler known to life. She lives many months during the pause of winter, but a bee hatched in summer literally works herself to death. Now what becomes of the theory that instinct is the product of generations of habit? This worker bee is sired by a drone who has done no work in all his life. He is mu uh it is mothered by a queen who cannot even help herself. Yet the offspring knows nothing but work and actually kills herself with overexertion. Would this be a case of heredity of instinct? Impossible. There must be something to account for such intense activity, such exactness of building, such sagacity of purpose, such harmony of plan, and more than all, of such correlation of individual mind is that a perfect unity obtains as much so as if there were one body and one spirit instead of many. Mechanism may be made to account for much, but when the mechanism is split into a thousand entities with a thousand wills, some other explanation is needed to answer for the adaptation of all the parts to the united whole. Now all this is interesting, and the children listening will enjoy it even if they miss the importance, but the other half of the story is for mature minds. Now listen, we're going to think through bees and flowers up to the purposes of God. We're going into the subject of design in the universe, and we know that design implies a designer. Now, if it can be shown that a direct relationship exists between plant and animal life, that without plants animals could not live, and that without insects many plant forms would perish, we shall have opened the way for the presumption that there is a definite purpose in the modes of life of these two divergent kingdoms. We shall see that however variant the forms, they are convergent in an adaptation that could scarcely be supposed to exist if we assume that all these modes are merely reactions to environment and without causative design. That is, if the habits of insects fit into the habits of plants in such a way as to conserve their very existence, there would appear to be back of both some intelligence that is not accounted for by mere chemical or mechanical action, but which shows deliberate intention with a wise end in view. Now every flower is designed essentially to regenerate. It is in fact a sex organ existing only for the purpose of perpetuating the species. Since both the male and female elements are present in the same bloom, it would seem that the flower must impregnate itself, but it has been observed that nature abhors self-pollination. To escape this, all sorts of devices are resorted to. Plants grow intelligently. It must not be supposed that God adopts certain hard and fast laws for development. There is adaptation seen all along the line. In accordance with this, plants shape themselves and relate themselves to their surrounding conditions with as much intelligence as a bird shows in its migrations. A flower depends on the wind to scatter its pollen, and has a wholly different pattern from those who are dependent upon bees or other insects for impregnation. For one thing, these wind distributing species produce enormous amounts of pollen so as to provide that in the great loss that must ensue some grains will find proper lodgement in some distant flower. How does the plant know that it must ensure against loss by profusion of product? Again, it is remarkable that flowers of this class have neither odor or nectar, both of which are necessary for those species that depend on instincts for fertilization, but neither of which is necessary when the wind does the work. Who taught these plants the economy of energy and restrained them from unnecessary expenditure of material? In those species fertilized by the winds, the pistil, that part of the flower designed to receive the floating pollen, is unusually large, made so in order to perform its mission to the best advantage, but the corla or protecting leaf is correspondingly small, as if aware that it must get out of the way and give the pistil a chance to catch the impregnating powder from the air. Whence the intelligence of these members of the flower to cooperate in the great work that means the perpetuation of the species? How does it know? Many grasses, sedges, and evergreens are constructed on this principle. How it comes about that a flower has such shape and characteristics as to be as to be adapted to the winds is not easy to answer. A giraffe may get his long neck by stretching it so as to pluck the fruit from the boughs of trees well above his head, but why a plant thrusts its flowers above the surrounding leaves for the winds to toy with calls for some other explanation. We can see that parts of the same organism may react together in reciprocal relationship, but we cannot see why they react in some like manner when the parts are separated and often far apart. Neither chemistry nor physics can account for this, because no adaptation or tropism can be supposed to influence a flower in the interests of another and distant flower. From all of which it would appear that organisms clearly have a purpose, that is, they exist for some end in view, in this case the perpetuation of the species. This involves something more than mechanism, namely intelligence, either within or without the organism. In the case of the growth of the spruce, this intelligence would appear to reside within the plant itself, which is remarkable enough. Cut off the central shoot that leads the young spruce tree upwards and one of the shoots from the whirl of lateral branches below slowly rises up and takes the place of the lost leader. You see, everything goes to show that nature has a designer, and that its members act for a reason. The purpose determines the nature and behavior of the plant or animal and accounts for harmony in relationship. But when we plot pass from the plant as a unit to plants as a species, vast numbers of units separated and often distant, we are at a loss to account for an intelligence as marked and remarkable as that in a single organism like the spruce, dog, or ape. It may seem far fetched to talk about the psychology of trees and flowers, but there is here something that merits the name. And since the intelligence, in this matter, the purpose of impregnation and the perpetuation of species concerns not a single organism but many and separated organisms, we shall have to admit a super element in such psychology. You can call it an overintelligence if you want, you can call it a purposive, determining wisdom dominant overall. But you know, the truth of the matter is it's a evidence, it's a testimony of an almighty God who has created an orderly, intelligent creation to manifest Himself and His glory. Now, we've said some things about the instinct of bees, and you may have thought that we lost our track when we started talking about the uh plants and the flowers in the midst of talking about the spirit of the beehive, but it has been shown that plants developed as if by intuition, with propagation in view, adjusting themselves to a purpose of which they cannot be conscious, but to which they adapt themselves with manifest intelligence and fine precision. We've shown that a single organism may adapt its parts by reason of environment, but that when distinct and separated organisms work together toward a common end, so that the instinct of the whole is comparable to the instinct of the individual, uh there's got to be an overriding intelligence. There's got to be a working of God. But what we want to look at is the the interplay of the two kingdoms, the animal and the vegetable, and see the part that bees have in the distribution of pollen and the way in which plants, as if they knew what they were doing, systematically tempt the bees to the mission of impregnating their own plant kind. It's an incidentally, it may be noted that man is involved in the series. The English nation owes its power and wealth largely to bumblebees, says Lovell in the Flower and the Bee. Lovell further cites the fact, noted by other writers, that farmers who proposed to raise beef in New Zealand found a lack of red clover without which cattle could not thrive. In order to secure red clover, they imported bumblebees. It was then found that mice robbed the bumblebees' nests, and to obviate that they bred cats. With all the machinery at work, the bees carried the pollen, the clover grew in abundance, the cows fattened, and the farmers were happy. So these are the cattle that lived on the clover that was pollinated by the bees, that were robbed by the mice, that were killed by the cats that lived in the world that God built. And now, for further story on the bees and the flowers, the bee works for her own purposes, to gather nectar for honey. Incidentally, she distributes the pollen clinging to her wings to the pistils of other flowers, and so contributes to the perpetuation of the flower species. In this the bee shows no generosity but acts from an inborn impulse. But the flower acts toward a different end. It seeks to fertilize its kind. Propagation is that toward which all nature madly and certainly moves and for which the flower as the generative organ exists. Old time theologians would say that God made flowers for man's sense of the beautiful. The naturalist would say that flowers grow as they do to attract insects. It is fructification that the plant seeks, and it is this to which the bee ministers, not knowing what she does. Whole species, perhaps genera would perish but for the habits of insect life. To this end the plant shows unexplainable adaptation. What we note is the beauty of color arrangement and brilliancy as a sex device to attract bees, so that pollen will be carried to other flowers on the wings of the insect. Spengel, a learned German pastor of the eighteenth century, writing for the purpose of showing divine wisdom in nature, was raised from obscurity by Darwin, who incorporated some of his ideas into his own, but Spengel shows that the bright hues of flowers serve as signals to attract the attention of nectar loving insects. Some flowers have special markings showing where the sweet lies. On the middle lobe of the upper lip of the bambus wagons are two bright yellow spots which guide the bumblebee to the exact location of the concealed nectar. Colored lines often lead to nectar glands. It could be no more plainly declared if a placard were posted for the human public. Here it is, help yourself. Here is nature's cafeteria, in which the bee gets its self-service while the flower makes the profits. Spengel also made an extensive study of some five hundred pollen bearing flowers. It is bees only of all insects that gather pollen, and to them is due more than any other insect the development of flowers. And it was Spengel's further discovery, now commonly accepted, that flowers secrete nectar for the sake of attracting insects. But how does the flower know? Chemical processes enter into the production of nectar, of course, but there's nothing in nature and the nature of the growth of the flower that would necessitate such a chemical process. Plants pollinated by the wind do not secrete nectar. It would seem that the plant not only discerns cunningly a need of attracting bees for a definite purpose, but has a sort of free will to produce as it chooses. It determines to produce a sweet, not an acid, or a non aromatic gum or a tasteless water, any of which it could do, but a sweet, the one and only method of attracting insects and transmitting itself to others of its kind for purposes of progeny. Intelligence of a high order. But whose intelligence? In man the thinking, reasoning, choosing power resides in the brain, but plants have no brains. We cannot suppose that they are conscious so that one could say I am a plant, I live, I will perpetuate myself. Where then is the power of thought and choice that determines the behavior of the flower? But this is not all the story. The very shape of the leaves of the cholera is often evidence of the same purpose. Stamens and pistols hold their anthers and stigmas in just the proper position so that pollen shall be transferred while the insect is obtaining its sweet reward for unintended labors. All such contrivances and cunning strategy are designed to attract the bee, and are arranged for its accommodation while directly contributing to the supreme need of the plant. The facts speak for themselves. Remarkable as instinct is, adaptation goes beyond it, and can scarcely be explained on any less hypothesis than that of a designing mind, an all knowing creator. Unknowing forces cannot match the needs of separated existences. We may understand something about the way a cut heals when we are informed that the bioplasts grow from each side of the wound and meet at the center to fuse and pull the gaping flesh together. We may see that the two sides are parts of the same unity, and that in their vital endowment each side feels after the other to find its severed self. I say we may understand. We do not, but the behavior is so familiar as to make it seem a matter of course. There is some rational satisfaction in noting the process. Yet no intelligence of severed parts or animal shagacity or instinctive habits surpasses the intelligence of separated existences. For the point here is the fact of disassociation. Many phenomena of nature are accounted for by chemical reaction, but the elements must be adjacent. We are familiar with many illustrations of this kind. The stomach, for example, may secrete hydrochloric acid because people eat salt, and hydrogen is found in abundance in the body fluid so that both chlorine and hydrogen, the two constituents of hydrochloric acid, are in the body and may be worked over into new materials. Another example is that of plants taking carbon dioxide from the adjacent air and adapting it to their purposes. Or again, those plants that use nitrogen from the air or the porous soil at their roots. In all such cases, chemical reaction is due to the fact that under favorable conditions, the nature of the substances determines their behavior when in contact. Always the living organism reacts as a unit in harmony with its own individual needs, helping itself from the material at hand. But the behavior of flowers is not accounted for by chemistry. Neither is it accounted for by mechanical means. Many plant habits are trophisms, or turnings, as when plants turn toward the light or roots turn into the ground or leaves turn away from the ground. All of this is mechanical, the agency being from without, but near enough to exert an influence so that what might appear as wise behavior in the plant may be explained by purely physical causes. But we cannot account for the peculiar adaptation of plants to the habits of bees on either chemical or mechanical grounds. When we consider the supreme end, propagation, and the means, insect habits, and the adaptation, shape, size, color markings, and tempting sweets, there is evidently a degree of intelligence scarcely equaled in the instinct of animals and not explained by the usual processes of cause and effect. Such operations must be referred to Almighty God. Now, I know you're listening to this program, and let's suppose that you're fair and unprejudiced. Let's suppose that you're genuinely seeking truth with an open mind. Is it going too far to say that there must be a determining intelligence that works with a definite purpose unknown to plants, unknown to animals, that employs what we call the laws of chemistry and physics to accomplish that end? Are we not justified in the conclusion that somewhere in this universe is a supreme power, a universal intelligence, in fact, an almighty God? Don't let words get in the way. Don't trouble yourself over uh your religious background or upbringings or prejudices. The truth of the matter is we are to praise God from whom all blessings flow. It is He only that can do these wonderful and marvelous things and bring them to pass. Now, bees coming back to the bees, uh, just for a few minutes here. Bees have a unique insect furnace, which they use to keep the temperature of the hive comfortable, even in the depth of winter, when the thermometer registers ten degrees below zero outside. The bees remain inside and are able to maintain their living quarters at sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. If the air becomes heavy and there's need of ventilation, they know how to arrange themselves in proper formation, and by vigorous action of their wings, one brigade on the inside and another on the outside, pull out the air and draw clean, fresh sandwich. Supply of air inside. The way they dispose of the dead body of a mouse is interesting. This dead body will surely foul the entire hive, necessitating an abandonment of their home. How can they get rid of the odor? They varnish the dead mouse from head to tail with propolis or bee glue, which forms an airtight mausoleum for the decomposing animal. Thus there is not the slightest contamination of their living abode. These and many other wonders might well occupy our attention. But let's take leave of the bee just for a minute and visit a hive. The soft light of the new day is sweeping across the field, the stimulating breeze is moving among the flowers, and throughout the hive is the thrill of buoyant life. Thousands of workers buzzing about cause the bee house to quiver with activity, but nowhere is there confusion. Everything proceeds in an orderly fashion. Each bee has its work to do and seems to do it joyously and with all its might. The gatherers of nectar, led by scouts, fly in a bee line to the scene of action, making good time at about fifteen miles an hour. Among the flowers, still heavy with dew, they pass in and out, gathering pollen, dust on their hairy covering, and using their slender curved tongues like tiny scimitars to draw from the blossoms the last drop of sweetness. Then they fly back to the hive, pausing for a brief moment before the guards at the entrance to give their peculiar salute and countersign before entering to deposit their spoils. Here in a little six-sided room with walls of solid wax is the storehouse or bank of deposit. The records show that one colony of bees will yield up to uh hundred one hundred pounds of honey per season. Very large return for their labor when we consider the insignificant amount each bee is able to manufacture in a day. Honey is carbohydrate food. It consists of water, levulose, dextrose, cane sugar, dextrins, gums, with very small quantities of ash, beeswax, a few pollen grains, and coloring material from the plants supplying nectar. The delectable food contains substantial amounts of vitamins A, B, and C. None of these is found in highly refined cane or beet sugars. In addition, it contains carbohydrates, a small amount of protein, a generous quantity of mineral salts, calcium, iron, iodine, copper, zinc, as well as enzymes and other vital nutritional substances. Unlike table sugar, it is alkaline. Hence it does not tend to produce body acidity. It is the simplest and most digestible form of sweetening and is readily absorbed and assimilated. In giving the honey bee to the world, the Creator has conferred a real blessing on humanity. God has always been thoughtful of his creatures, and everywhere we see manifestations of his love and care. When he conferred on us the blessing of the Bible, this would seem to be the crowning evidence of his solicitude. Within this book are the truths of God. Without this book we would know nothing about him and the astonishing program for the world which is laid out therein. We have noticed how God's archenemy has attempted the destruction of the Holy Scriptures. Thomas Paine thought he had demolished the Bible, but after he had crawled despairingly into a dishonored grave, the book took such a leap forward that the world's printing presses were almost unable to supply the enormous demand for millions of copies in more than a thousand languages and dialects. Bob Ingersoll traveled around the country, exploding the book and showing up the mistakes of Moses at two hundred dollars a night. It's easy to abuse Moses at such a price, especially as Moses is dead and cannot talk back. It would be, I think, an exciting experience after listening to an infidel speak on the mistakes of Moses, to hear Moses talk about the mistakes of the infidel, but Moses, you know, was a rather difficult man to deal with. Pharaoh tried talking back to him and met with rather poor success. Janice and Jambries withstood Moses and found a grave in the Red Sea. Korah and Dathan and Abiam tried it, but they went down to hell so quick and they never returned. But now Moses is dead, and it's easy to abuse him. It doesn't take a very brave man to kick a dead lion, but what then makes this book so different from all other books? Whose book is it? Who made it? Infidels attribute the selection of the books which comprise it to the caprice of fallible, gullible men. But what does the Bible say about itself? Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy testimonies are wonderful, therefore doth my soul keep them. The entrance of thy word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, Psalm one hundred and nineteen. No prophecy of scriptures of any private interpretation, but the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. For Second Peter one twenty one. Is this witness true? It must be. If that be so, then surely we are compelled to give our attention to the utterance of God. It was Dr. Van Dyck, I think, who expressed himself in words that ought to be remembered. He said, Born in the East and clothed in oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes to the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the most high, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace and time of peril, a word of comfort and time of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble in its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the heart has lit the reading of its well worn pages. It has woven itself into our dearest dreams so that love, friendship, sympathy, and devotion, memory and hope put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech. Transcending all other benefits and blessing, my friend, we find the Bible to be the way of life. The Lord Jesus Christ is revealed as this way, and also the truth and the life. The Bible brings to us the only solution of the world's need. Yes, there is a creator, all wise and all knowing, and he sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to suffer and bleed and die in your place, so that the maker of the bees, the maker of the plants, the maker of man, and the maker of heaven might welcome man into this heaven that he has made. How can a man ever hope to gain heaven? Through the merits of the finished blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible declares that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and the third day Jesus rose again, that all who call upon him in faith believing, from a sincere heart might receive the forgiveness of sin and the gift of God, which is eternal life. Have you ever been born again? Has the great maker, the great creator, the great mastermind of the universe, become your personal Lord and Savior? Oh, how you need to put your faith and trust in God's only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust him for your soul's salvation.

Where To Hear More Teaching

SPEAKER_00 28:46

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, James W. Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptistland, or our website, BibleBaptistaland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.