God of Creation: Whales

A whale looks like a fish until you notice what it has to do every few minutes just to live: surface, breathe, and refill an oxygen supply that keeps it from drowning. That single detail opens the door to a bigger question we explore today: what does whale anatomy, behavior, and survival tell us about the God of creation? We read from Genesis, then trace how Scripture’s claim of creatures reproducing “after their kind” collides with evolutionary transmutation and pushes us toward a Creator who designs with purpose. 

From blowholes and spouting to thick blubber, massive hearts, and horizontal tail flukes, we walk through whale biology in plain language. We also unpack baleen whales that filter the sea for food and the surprising fact that even the largest whales cannot swallow a good sized herring. Then we turn to the sperm whale, its immense teeth, and the well known substances spermaceti and ambergris, before widening out to seals, sea lions, and the walrus, each built for harsh water and cold climates with the exact traits needed to survive. 

The conversation does not stop at nature facts. We connect creation to Psalm 104, then speak directly about the unseen spiritual conflict, the reality of sin, and God’s desire to save rather than destroy. We explain salvation by grace through faith as a gift you can receive, not a wage you earn. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Purpose

SPEAKER_01 1:01

And a very pleasant good day. Greetings to one and all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. I'm Brother James, and we welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. We're so happy that you've chosen to be with us at this time for the next thirty minutes as we discuss the God of creation. Been doing that for quite some time now. This will be lesson number thirteen in our uh series of studies, actually examining the world that God Himself has made, and showing uh conclusively, I believe, and apparently many others agree, showing conclusively that there must be a creator. That creator is none other than God Himself. And we are going to talk today and the next several programs about some of the more fascinating uh animals and mammals in God's creation and some of the wonderful and marvelous things about them. Now let's start in here by reading from the Bible record in Genesis chapter number one. The Bible says in verse twenty, God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth, and the evening and the morning were the fifth day. God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God saw that it was good. God saw that it was good. Not only does God create, and no one else can do that. Not only does God make, and no one else can truly do that, but whatever God creates, whatever God makes, is good. Now let's talk about oh, for a few minutes this morning, about whales. You know, have you ever noticed how that well it it would just take volumes really to study all the living creatures, but you notice that God made every living creature after its kind, implying not only their variety of forms, instincts, and habits, but that each must produce its own kind and its own kind only through all successive generations. And by this law of the Creator, any evolutionary transmutation of species is absolutely impossible. Um The whale family includes not only the animals commonly designated by that name, but also the uh grampus, the porpoise, the dolphin, etc. They're remarkable creatures. Like fish, they live in the water, but all their internal parts resemble those of land animals. They have lungs, liver, spleen, bladder, and a heart with partitions pumping red blood throughout their bodies. They breathe air, and are viviparous, that is, they bring forth living young like other mammals and suckle their young. The catacea C E T A C E A, which is in the order or which is the order to which whales and dolphins belong, include the largest of all mammals. They are more thoroughly aquatic than the seals. They obtain their livelihood in the waters, and their entire structure fits them for traversing the waves. Although the whales closely resemble fish and are able to pass a considerable time below water, they possess no gills, but must breathe atmospheric air, as do other members of the mammal family. When one of these gigantic creatures rises to the surface of the sea, it makes huge respirations called spoutings, in which a column of mixed water and vapor is ejected from the nostrils or blowholes to a height of as much as twenty feet. The blowholes are placed in the upper part of the head so that it is necessary to have only this part of the body out of the water when breathing. In order that this animal may descend into the depths and remain there for a considerable time without getting fresh supplies of air, it has a very large reservoir of arterial blood which receives oxygen during the spoutings and is kept in reserve for use by the four chambered heart. Of course there's a large lung capacity also, and the whale draws on this supply of oxygen. When its reservoir is exhausted, it must rise to the surface or drown. The forelimbs look very much like fins of a fish, but on close examination they are seen to have fingers or digits, typically mammalian. These fins are not of much help in progression. The whale moves by means of a horizontal and enormously powerful tail. The front limbs are used to preserve balance of the huge mass, and the mother whale uses them as arms to clasp her offspring. Usually there's just one whale given birth to at a time. It is born alive, suckled like other young mammals. Also, it's immediately able to accompany its mother in her path through the waves. The skin of the whale is hairless. Underneath is a large layer of fat, sometimes nearly two feet in thickness. It's elastic as India rubber, and provides warmth and resistance to the enormous pressure of the water when the body is deeply submerged. It is said that whales can plunge to a depth of up to five thousand feet, where the pressure is about two hundred thousand tons. Here again we see the marvelous design of the creator. These whales are the most gigantic animals in the world. The elephant and rhinoceros are pygmies in comparison. The sperm whale often attains a length of sixty to seventy feet, while the common whale has been found more than one hundred feet long and weighing more than two hundred and fifty tons. The spinal column of a whale is like the trunk of a good sized tree, the individual vertebrae being massive blocks bound together by the toughest ligaments and cartilages. The main artery is a pipe, large enough to hold easily a full grown man. The heart is a great engine of stupendous capacity and power, throwing out gallons of blood at every pulsation. The mouth is large enough to engulf a boat with all its crew, its tongue like a vast feather bed where a half dozen men could lie. Its flattened tail is a massive plate of a hundred square feet of marvelous strength, able with one blow to dash to pieces the stoutest boat. The Greenland whale, northern whale, or right whale, is an inhabitant of the Arctic Ocean. Its head is remarkably large, the jaws opening very far back, the mouth is about sixteen feet in length and seven feet in width, and can be ten or twelve feet high. Into this cavernous opening a good sized boat might enter, and some have, unfortunately for the crew. The most curious feature of the mouth is the balen, that is several hundred plates which hang down from each side of the upper jaw. These strips vary in length according to position, but the largest are from ten to twelve feet long, nearly a foot wide at the base, and splitting at the extremity into a multitude of hairy like fringes. The total weight of the balen in a large whale is about a ton. When feeding, these animals drive along with mouth wide open, engulfing countless millions of tiny beings that swarm in the waters, shrimps, crabs, lobsters, mollusks, etc. When the mouth is filled with this mass of living creatures, the tongue, which weighs two tons, is raised, then the water is strained out through the baleen fringes, leaving a mass of food to travel down the gullet, which is so small that the largest whale in the world cannot swallow a good sized herring. Can we resist the inference that this arrangement for feeding must have been planned? In spite of its huge size and enormous bulk, this species of whale is inoffensive and very timid, except when roused by pain or the sight of its offspring in danger, and will always flee the presence of man. The words of the Lord are perfect, and all severe to extol his wisdom and power and goodness. Even the huge frames of these leviathans of the ocean display the perfection of workmanship. Every member and organ, every fiber of the muscles that weld the ponderous body, every vein and artery concerned in driving the vital fluid through the immense bodies, and every nerve and tissue down to those that can be seen and examined only by the aid of a microscope, they are all finished with a delicacy and perfection that is unsurpassed. How clearly we see the hand of the Creator in his dealing with these monsters. He has given them affection for their young and for their kind, and they manifest a faithfulness to one another which often surpasses the love of humans. They are faithful to the instinctive laws which have been made for them, and to such a degree that humans can learn much from them of fidelity to spouse and parental love. Two whales, male and female, will remain faithful to one another throughout their lives, and show great delight as they play in the water, hoisting their bodies into the air, spouting and splashing in a great display of good nature. We join with the writer of Psalm one hundred and four and say, O Lord, how manifold are thy works, and wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches. Yonder is the sea great and wide, and in them are things creeping things innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships, and there's the Leviathan, and these wait for thee. Oh, it's just a wonderful, marvelous thing to think about the Spirit of God creating all these great treasures in the deep. Repeatedly the Bible brings evidence to show how wonderful are the attributes of God in creation. If this aspect of the Almighty is so important in God's sight, surely we must not neglect to examine it. If our minds are open, there can be but one result. We shall be impelled to worship such a loving and powerful heavenly Father, who makes these great wails as just a small show and display of his strength and of his might. We'll not be content to hold merely a cold intellectual view of God. We'll not be satisfied simply to admire his greatness in making this world. We'll go further and understand his relationship to us and ours to him. If we are as wise as we ought to be, we'll sit at his feet and learn. We'll sit in submission and surrender, acknowledging our sin, but gladly accepting the sinner's friend, the Lord Jesus Christ, as our perfect and only Savior. Now, these whales and porpoises and dolphins belong to the order Catacea C E T A C E A, and all are recognizable by the entire absence of hind limbs. Deep within the body wall, however, are found small pieces of bone which seem to have no use, and those who believe in the evolutionary theory are fond of saying, without reason, of course, that these pieces of bone are remnants of hind limbs which were present when these creatures lived on land and were what we call terrestrial animals. Now we're not going to argue that point at this time because there's really no sense in it, although it may be said that there is a reasonable explanation for the phenomena. Whales, although so large and powerful, are thought to live to a great age, which is contrary to the general rule among large mammals. A female member of this tribe will produce young as early as three years, one at a birth. While showing great differences in size, whales and dolphins have many features in common. The porpoise is only four or five feet in length and weighs about sixty pounds. The sulfur bottom whale grows to be one hundred or more feet long and weighs many tons. The head of the whale, although possibly enormous, is relatively light in weight. The brain is large and shows many convolutions, but the senses of smell and hearing seem to be very slight. The nostrils are placed at the top of the head to form the well known blowhole which can be closed by a powerful valve. Teeth may be huge and numerous or may be altogether absent. The tail flattened into two horizontal paddles or flukes of fat and muscle, provides most of the motive power propelling the animal with an up and down motion as opposed to the side to side motion seen in all fishes. The whalebone whales comprise the right whales and the gray whales. Both show what is described in the last section that we talked about that the baleen consists of long strands of a horn like substance hanging down for a distance of several feet, forming a curtain like sieve which strains off the seawater and separates the small forms of life by the thousands on which the whale lives. The sulfur bottom is a giant among giants and attains a length of one hundred feet or more, the largest mammal now living. An adult African elephant, eleven feet high at the shoulder, could stand quite comfortably inside one of these whales. Most whales are fond of company, and so they travel in herds, as do the miniature species in what are called schools. Many of them show great speed and activity, especially the humpback whale, which, in spite of great length and immense weight, indulges in a grotesque courtship, leaping high out of the water like a tarpon or a salmon, apparently just showing off before a potential spouse. The cashalot or sperm whale is of particular interest. It usually inhabits the warmer parts of the ocean and travels from one part of the globe to the other. Whales caught in the Atlantic Ocean have been found with spears of South Pacific Islanders embedded in their flesh. Some of these animals have a circumference of thirty to forty feet, and when they were more common than now, doubtless many exceeded these dimensions. The distinguishing feature of the sperm whale is its enormous and curiously formed head, in the upper portion of which is a great cavity containing a transparent liquid, a mixture of oil and spermaceti. When purified and hardened, it is used as a medicinal ointment and for the manufacture of candles. A whale sixty feet long may yield about twenty five barrels of spermaceti and about one hundred barrels of oil. There is found in addition a still more valuable substance, the ambergris AMBERGRIS, which is a fatty uh concretion of the bile ducts. It exists in small quantity in the intestines of the whale, but is usually found floating in the sea where it has been ejected in large masses, sometimes a hundred pounds in weight. Now, if you take this stuff and refine it, it makes a very expensive drug and is also used in making costly perfumes. The sperm whale has no baline plates for straining out food. But its lower jaw is furnished with forty to fifty immense conical teeth which fit into grooves or sockets in the untoothed upper jaw. These teeth are nine inches long, and one of them will weigh about three pounds. This whale feeds on squids or cuttlefishes, and the teeth are exactly made to hold its slippery prey, which are soon forced down the ample throat. There are some other mammals which breathe air and yet are specially adapted for life in the water. We ought not to overlook the seals and the sea lions. Seals are divided into three families. First the earless or true seals, second the eared seals, and third the walrus. They have long fish like bodies with foreign hind limbs modified into paddles. We have all noticed the extremely clumsy movements of the seal on land. It shuffles along in its forefeet, dragging its hind feet, but the spine is very flexible, and so the body is urged forward by a series of awkward jerks and twistings of the spinal column. The spine with its attached muscles is the seal's chief motor power in swimming, so that in the water it is as rapid and graceful as it is awkward on land. They live, of course, mainly on fish, and so can exist only by proving swifter than their prey. All seals have hairy coats, rendered waterproof by a fatty secretion from the skin. Usually a thick layer of fat beneath the skin protects them from the cold, and most of them prefer the cold waters of the northern latitudes. There are about eighteen species of earless seals, all frequenting the temperate and colder waters, all of them without external ears. They can remain underwater for a long time, five to fifteen minutes, in fact. At every breath, the nostrils open wide and close again by means of a constricting muscle called a spenter. Thus, when the creature is submerged, no water can pass into the lungs. They assemble in small herds, each seal consumes about seven pounds of fish per day, and the seal is easily trained to become strongly attached to its human friends. The greenland seals assemble in immense herds, and of these the annual catch is very heavy. The matrimonial alliances of elephant seals, the largest of the family, are conducted on the principle that the strongest males take the best females, and the weaker males taking those females that are left, if any. During the season of courtship, the males fight desperately, inflicting fearful wounds with their tusk like teeth, with which they can crack stones as if they were nutshells. Each victorious combatant selects a considerable number of wives over whom he rules with despotic sway. He is very careful of their safety, however, and will defend them with his life if necessary. The sea lion is simply a huge hair seal, ten feet long, eight or ten feet in circumference, and weighing as much as twelve hundred pounds. They are very noisy, keeping up a constant uproar, the old animals bellowing like bulls, and the younger ones bleeding like sheep. The walrus, or true seahorse, is a monster of the deep and a class all its own. It has a strange head with a projecting muzzle bristling with long wiry hairs and a couple of enormous canine teeth that project from the upper jaw. These tusks grow until they are two feet long and weigh from four to nine pounds. They are useful for raking up mollusks out of the mud and form the excellent grappling hooks that they need to climb out of the water onto the ice. The walrus is a valuable animal, its skin, teeth, and oil being in demand. It is practically confined to the Arctic regions where when they were more numerous than now, hunters have obtained as much as thirty thousand pounds of ivory in a single year. It has been calculated that in ten years or more, one hundred thousand of them have been destroyed to furnish two million gallons of oil and four hundred thousand pounds of ivory. But here again is the infinite wisdom of God. He brought the waters into being, designing this fluid for the home of various sorts of animals and fishes, and then proceeded to prepare the creatures for the waters. We have been impressed again and again with the infinite variety of the Creator's plans. Whenever a special organ is needed, it's always forthcoming. No matter how difficult the environment, the animals which have been placed there find themselves in possession of the precise faculties, instincts, and organs which enable them to survive. Man has been allotted to the surface of the earth for his home. We are surrounded with all sorts of strange and often menacing conditions. The greatest of these dangers, I suppose, we would have to say, is an invisible but personal devil operating against humanity. He has challenged God for world control. He is ambitious for power and for worship. In the unseen realm there is a tremendous conflict raging all around you and I as we listen to the broadcast today. Few of us are conscious of the ceaseless struggle between the two mighty powers Satan, the great deceiver and liar, who would lead men into perdition and destruction and destroy their souls eventually forever in a lake of fire if they would but follow him, and then Almighty God, the all wise, the all kind, the loving, merciful God, who wants you to be saved and born again. And the Bible is written not just to give you rules and regulations and do's and don'ts, but the Bible is written as the creation itself is written, for the purpose of showing you the goodness, the greatness, the glory, the wonder of Almighty God, that you might not ever be tempted to follow the lies of Satan, but rather that you might follow the true and living God and allow Him to guide and direct you. The Bible says O Lord, how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches. So is the great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beast. There go the ships. There is that Leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein. These all wait upon thee, that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That thou givest them, they gather, thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest thy face, and they are troubled, thou takest away their breath, and they die and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created. Thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure forever. The Lord shall rejoice in his works. Now you were created, that's from Psalm one hundred and four, verses twenty-four to uh thirty-one. You were created by God. You were given life by God. Your food and material needs are provided by God. When God takes back the breath of life that He gave you, that will be the end of your physical, earthly life. And yet the Bible says the glory of the Lord shall endure forever. The Lord shall rejoice in his works. Now if you if you honestly and genuinely wanted to live forever, if you honestly, genuinely desired eternal life, you know that you could have it. The Bible says God is not willing that any should perish. The Bible says of of hell in Matthew chapter twenty five that it was prepared for the devil and his angels, never for man. It was never God's intention that man be eternally separated from himself, but the Bible says Isaiah wrote it down for God. Your sins have separated between you and your God. Your iniquities have hid his face from you. So what did God do? Well, he did what he's always done, what he did in the Garden of Eden, what he did when Moses was out in the wilderness, what he did when Gideon was threshing wheat in secret, what he did when Manoah and his wife were out uh tending to the chores and duties of the day, what God has always done, what God did when Lot was down in Sodom and Gomorrah, what he did when Noah was uh finding grace in his eyes before the flood. God has always sought man. Man doesn't seek God. Man is a rebel, man flees and hides because of the shame and the guilt that he feels in his bosom because of sin, but God is the Savior. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when he showed up on planet Earth nearly two thousand years ago now, he said, The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Jesus said, I am not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. You know it's such a sad thing, and if it grieves those of us that know the Lord, how it must grieve God Himself. He loves you so much, He cares for you so greatly, and the desire of His holy heart is to find you and your lost condition, to woo you and win you by His love, and then to save you by His grace. God is not seeking you that He might destroy you or hurt you or make your life miserable. He's seeking you that He might save you, forgive you, cleanse you, give you His gift of everlasting life. You know what a wonderful thing when you think about it. Not only that God would love man, but that God would have a love for sinful fallen man, a love so great that it would compel him to send his only begotten Son into this world to suffer and bleed and die, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus said it himself, he said, I I came not to condemn the world, but the world through me might be saved. Jesus is not the condemner, sin condemns. Jesus is the Savior from sin. Now how can you know this Lord Jesus Christ? How can you know this forgiveness of sins? It's such a simple matter. Why, if I walked into your home just now and said, Here is a dollar bill, I would like to give it to you. The desire of my heart is to give you this dollar bill and I held it out to you. What would you have to do to receive it? All you would have to do would be reach forth your hand and take it. Now you'd have to believe that I would truly give it to you. You'd have to believe it was a real dollar, it was a real, genuine offer, but once you believe that, you would simply stretch forth your hand and take it. That's what a gift is. And the Bible says we are saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves. It is the gift of God. It's a genuine salvation, it's a genuine offer of salvation that God extends to you. Will you receive it? Will you reach forth by faith? Lay hold upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and be born again.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

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