God of Creation: Kangaroos, Bats, and Beavers

A blind, inch-long joey crawls to a pouch it has never seen, locks onto nourishment it cannot even draw in, and survives without choking. That’s not a cartoon of nature, it’s a real-world design problem with a real-world solution, and it sets the tone for Lesson 14 of our “The God of Creation” series.

We start with marsupials and spotlight the kangaroo’s pouch, the mother’s milk delivery, and the newborn’s life-or-death anatomy. We also touch the Virginia possum and the strange behaviors that show up fully formed at birth. Along the way, we keep asking the same question: if these systems must work perfectly on day one, how do you honestly explain them by chance alone? We then open the Bible to Proverbs and Psalms to show God as a refuge, a strong tower, and a hiding place for people who are just as helpless without Him.

Next we turn to bats and their nighttime mastery, including classic experiments that reveal navigation beyond eyesight and point toward what many call echolocation. We connect these wonders to Romans 1 and the claim that creation makes God’s eternal power plainly visible. We close with the beaver’s dams, lodges, and canals, then bring it home with the most important preparation of all: not just building a temporary house, but receiving eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Purpose

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And a very pleasant good day. Greetings to each and every one of you 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 this is the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast, a thirty-minute uh program in which we try our best to exalt the person, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. These three are one. We try our best to exalt the person of Almighty God, His Son, the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, His Blessed and Holy Word, the Bible. And we hope and pray that you'll stay with us for the next thirty minutes as we continue on with a uh a very different uh type of program, uh one that we've been running now for quite some time. This will be lesson number uh fourteen in our series entitled The God of Creation, and we've been discussing some of the great marvels of the animal world because we believe that the creation proves not only a creator, but proves the wisdom, power, might, and glory of that creator. So we hope that you listen carefully. We have some uh some kind of interesting things to talk about on the program today that we believe will point you uh to God, and if you know uh his son Jesus Christ will increase your uh love for and your faith in his blessed person. We turn today to another class of animals known as the marsupials, or pouched animals, all of them which with one exception inhabitants of Australia and a few adjacent islands. Many of the species show considerable differences from one another in external appearance, and not a few would pass as members of other orders of mammals. All of them, however, are distinguished by the presence of a pouch or bag in the lower part of the abdomen. The Latin word marsupium, which gives them their name, means a pouch or bag. In this bag are very tiny nipples connected with the milk producing glands of the mother. For our purpose it will be sufficient to confine our study to the extraordinary member of this group of animals, the kangaroo, perhaps giving a moment's attention to the possum, the only one not native to Australia. Kangaroos range in size from animals standing five feet and over to forms no larger than rats, but all showing a remarkable similarity of build. They are vegetarians exclusively and rely for safety upon speed, for which purpose the hind legs are immensely exaggerated. The tail is developed to form a counterpoise when traveling in a semi erect posture, and also to act as a support when seated. If cornered, a kangaroo can rest on the tail alone and strike out with both hind feet at the same time. The small forelimbs are efficient grasping organs. The hind legs are about three and a half feet long, ending in a strong foot with four toes, each powerfully clawed. The fourth toe is developed into a long, solid nail, nearly twelve inches in length, and forming a formidable offensive weapon. The tail measures three feet in length. The front teeth of the kangaroo are remarkable in that they are from two to six in the upper jaw, but only two in the lower. These have knife like edges, and being movable serve as a pair of shears for clipping the grass on which the animals feed. When the animal sits supported on its hind feet and tail, it is rather more than four feet high, but when standing erect, it is almost as tall as a full grown man. The female is so much smaller that she might be taken for an entirely different species. The color of the rather woolly fur is brown, mingled with grey, but the forefeet and tip of the tail are black. The eyes are large, round, soft, and beautiful, giving it a gentle expression that compensates for the rather savage appearance of the teeth, gleaming white between the cleft lips. The kangaroo moves awkwardly on all fours when grazing or walking short distances. When alarmed it travels by a series of hops, each leap measuring about fifteen feet. By this method of progression, utilizing to the full the powerful hind legs, it shows enormous speed and in full flight can clear bushes or fences nine feet high. The truly astonishing features of this animal concern the pouch, and the way the young are born and find the difficult passage to the pouch where they are reared by the mother. There is only one young kangaroo at birth, and this comes into existence in a very immature form. When it leaves its mother's urogenital sinus, it is barely an inch long. It is soft, naked, blind, helpless, and semi transparent like an earthworm. It is born thirty nine days after its antenatal life began. It has been given a strange instinct which causes it immediately after it is born in the open to try to find its way into the mother's pouch. Accordingly, it makes its way on knees and elbows up the legs to the maternal abdomen, fighting its way along a tract of hair, licked smooth by the mother until it finds the pouch. Entering the pouch, it searches blindly in the darkness for one of the two nipples therein. Finding it, this is grasped in the mouth, the teeth swelling into a bulb, filling the infant's mouth the infant mouth cavity. At the same time, a circular muscle surrounding the lips of the baby kangaroo contracts in a tight, involuntary spasm which holds it firmly attached to this part of the mother. The reason for this is that it has at this stage no power to suck, and although so close to nourishment it would die if the feeding process were not automatic. The mother is possessed of a real pumping apparatus in the form of a contractile mammary gland muscle under control of her will. When baby is safely attached to the nipple and ready for its first meal, the milk is pumped directly into the mouth of the waiting baby, which in Australia goes by the name of Joey. And now there's another very curious and interesting feature which could not possibly be a chance arrangement. Here is a semiconscious, immature baby with no power to suck, having fluid pumped into its mouth and throat. Now you've got to ask yourself, why didn't it choke? As it undoubtedly would do without the strange device seen in the structure of the windpipe. Without this change, death would surely be the lot of this tiny kangaroo, but in order to prevent choking, the windpipe, which in other mammals and in humans terminates at the same level as the gullet, is elongated and shunted forward into the back opening of the nasal chamber. Thus air gets right down to the lungs, but no milk goes the wrong way. Now how do you explain that? It's very interesting to find a similar adaptation in a whalebone whale, in which as it rushes through the water with its mouth wide open, the glottis or windpipe is pushed forward into the back opening of the nasal chamber. At the same time, the front nostrils, or blow holes, are closed by valves and so no water gets down to the lungs of the whale. To attribute this phenomenon to nature or chance or natural selection is to put an impossible strain on anyone's intelligence. Here is design of the most pronounced character, and it cannot be denied. In this internal cradle, the young kangaroo passes its earlier stages of development and does not generally face the open until it's about six months old. Before the sage, of course, it does leave its mother's protecting pouch, never going very far afield, however, as it nibbles the grass. At the first sign of danger it rushes for the pocket, which is always ready to receive it. It leaps head first into this safe haven and then turns around to peep out on the world. The possums are small tree dwelling mammals, feeding principally upon a mixed diet of vegetable food, birds, eggs, insects, and the smallest animals available. The Virginia possum is a native to the southern states. It's about three feet long, has a twelve inch tail, and is about the size of a large cat. Its nest is built in some hollow tree, fallen or standing, or under the protection of old projecting roots. A dozen or more young possums are born at a time. They're less than an inch long and each weighs about four grains. At the end of only a week of feeding in the pouch, they will weigh as much as thirty grains. When five weeks old, they climb to the mother's back, clinging to her fur with their claws, twisting their tails around the mother's conveniently placed large terminal extremity. The possum is cunning, and when captured immediately simulates death with jaws open, tongue extended, eyes dimmed. Even if kicked and beaten it will not quiver a muscle or flicker an eyelid. But if the gaze of its tormentor be removed but for an instant, away scampers the apparently dead animal. Now it'll be seen that these animals possess powers which are denied humans. They have that mysterious instinct which no one understands. On this power the life of the individual depends, and likewise the propagation of the species. This instinct cannot be learned. The animal has it immediately when it is born. Without it, death would be its certain lot. It could not have evolved, because it must be in perfect condition from the very beginning in order for the form of life to continue its existence. There's but one satisfactory explanation the only wise God, the Creator. You know, just like those animal children flee to those pouches for safety when danger is near, the Bible says in Proverbs eighteen ten, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it, and is safe. Psalm forty six, God is our refuge in strength, the very present help and trouble. Therefore will we not fear. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm sixty two, my soul wait thou in silence for God only, for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my high tower, I shall not be moved. Trust in him at all times. Psalm one hundred and four and one hundred and two speak of God as the great refuge and the great hiding place where we might flee and hide. And Second Timothy chapter two speaks of the foundation of God standing sure. Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his. This great maker and this great creator who created the hiding place of safety for the little helpless baby kangaroo has done the same for us. Our refuge, our hiding place of safety, is the person of God Himself. You know, there's also a real quaint little creature in the mammal family, and that's the bat. They're usually regarded with superstitious dread and viewed with utter repugnance by many people. They belong to an order taken from a Greek word meaning hand and wing. The word indicates that they are hand winged animals or chiroptera. The early naturalists were much puzzled when they tried to classify them. Some called them birds because they could fly, others quadrupeds because they could walk, and when eventually they were viewed as mammals, they were placed at the end of the list of a sort of connecting link between fur and feathers. They are mammals through and through, covered with hair, giving milk to their young, and yet they are aerial as most birds. The bat has four limbs and a tail, the fingers of the front limbs being remarkably elongated to serve as supports for a thin, semi-transparent membrane, which is a prolongation of the skin of the flanks. The arms are incapable of rotary movement, but the skin enshrined fingers are able to beat the air rapidly with the steady strokes necessary for flight. The short thumb is armed with a strong projecting hook like claw by which the bat can attach itself to any convenient object as well as help itself along a level surface. They are found in practically all parts of the world and vary in size from that of a small mouse to a creature with a wingspan of several feet. Their facial appearance is exceedingly grotesque because of the peculiar development of muzzle and ears. The former is known as a nose leaf, while in some the ears are membranously expanded into such lengths that they can be folded as though they were wings. Imagine a mule with ears like that. There are more than four hundred species, the great vr uh majority are insect eaters, though a few do take blood, like the vampire bat that you've heard so much about. The perpendicular wing membrane, which I mentioned a moment ago, is a kind of a silky skin that begins at the side of the neck. It passes along the front surface of the arm, it skips the clawed thumb and is stretched out on four very long fingers. From the back surface of the arm, the membrane reaches along the sides of the body and is continued down the leg as far as the ankle. Another membrane arises from the ankle and extends between the hind legs, including the tail, if one is present. This wing membrane has drawn the leg outwards in a strange manner, and the knee points not forwards but backwards. A bat therefore cannot stand up, and although it can alight on its resting place head upwards and may remain fixed by its thumbs, the common position when it rests is head downwards, clean by well clawed toes of one or both feet. A bat resting quietly on all fours has the knees turned upwards, the elbows touching the knees. Bats can launch themselves into the air even from off the ground, and their flight is masterly. Contrary to a widely held idea, bats have eyes, which are small and poorly developed, not providing them with any considerable degree of sight, yet they are able to fly with amazing speed and cleverness, avoiding all kinds of obstacles in a room, diving under a couch, constantly looping the loop, indulging in sudden somersaults and outdoors in rapid noiseless motion, capturing moths, gnats, and flying betles with unerring skill. This animal can thread its way amid vows of trees with a faculty quite beyond its powers of sight, and does it with the greatest of ease even when the darkness is profound. In fact, it always seems to prefer darkness to light. This curious power led to an interesting experiment which has been repeated many times by curious investigators to ascertain how the bat avoids collision with any impediments placed in its path no matter how small or large or numerous. The bat's eyes are temporarily sealed up so as to render them quite blind. Then the bats are liberated in a chamber in which were suspended cloths with holes little bigger than the bat's body. Strings were stretched at short intervals all through the room in order to increase the difficulties. Though deprived of sight, they flitted about without the least embarrassment, passing unerringly through the holes in the cloths, missing the strings with their flapping wings, turning corners at breakneck speed, and seeming to enjoy their phenomenal performance. The closing of the bat's ears seems to cause rather more difficulty, but even then their torturous flight among the various obstructions was not greatly hindered. It is evident that in its nocturnal evolutions, the scientists say, the bat was guided by some unknown power or some sixth sense which cannot be explained. But the truth of the matter is God almighty developed the bat and created the bat with an exquisite nervous system of the wings, with a remarkable system of radar far in advance of anything our scientists and technological wizards have been able to create even to this present day. With few exceptions, bats love company, and their number runs into the thousands of possibly millions under favorable circumstances. Probably the most remarkable bat cave in the world is in Texas, from which at night for two hours at a stretch a rapidly moving stream of bats will emerge, a veritable cloud of flying forms. The bats of northern countries, in the wintertime, pass into a state of true hibernation, sinking into a complete coma, their breathing movements scarcely perceptible, the heart beating about twenty five times a minute. For their winter sleep they prefer a hollow tree, a corner of a church tower, an opening under the thatch of barns, or a crevice in a cave. Ordinarily, bats will give birth to one baby bat, occasionally two. One baby is about all a mother bat can manage. During nursing time, June until August, the young bat clings with its toes and thumbs to its mother's hair, its mouth to its mother's breast, the parent flitting, wheeling, glancing, doubling in rapid flight, business as usual. When the mother rests, she folds her wings around the child. The females live together in colonies apart from the males until late autumn when both sexes decide to be sociable, the time of pairing. There is an extraordinary fact here. Although pairing is in the autumn, the internal fertilization of the egg cells does not occur until the following spring. One writer commenting on this unusual feature says thus the disadvantage of having the young ones developing during the starvation hibernating period is avoided, and the carrying of the young before birth is reduced to a minimum. And then, this writer adds, Nature's ways are wondrous wise. But he failed again to give God the glory. There's no doubt that in the many astonishing features which have been described in just our little talk about the bats and the kangaroos, that man's explanation that nature's ways are wondrous wise falls short. The satisfactory solution is that God the Creator is wondrously wise. You know, it's been uh nearly a century since Paley wrote his natural theology, and he said design if established proves the personality of the deity, as distinguished from what is sometimes called nature or principle, that which can contrive or design must be a person. The seat of intelligence is a person. Now we say to you what the Bible says in Romans chapter number one the invisible things of Him, speaking of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Now these are strong words, but you've got to hear these words and obey them. The end of those who preferred to reject God from their consciousness was that God gave them up, Romans chapter one says. This would be the most terrible judgment ever imagined, an eternal separation from God. Now God gave a bat many remarkable powers. But you know what? That bat can't live forever. God gave the kangaroo wonderful gift of physical life, and a marvelous preservation of that physical life, but He didn't give that kangaroo the joy of receiving eternal, everlasting life, but you and I. Ah, Jesus said, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hand. My father who gave them me is greater than all, and no one is able to take them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. Now I ask you again. You're more than a kangaroo as marvelous as it may be. You're more than a bat as wonderful as it may be. God didn't create you to live out a few years and then pass into eternity, into nothingness, or as the Bible says, into hell fire, but God created you to live forever with him in the glory of heaven. And you can have that eternal life by receiving his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know there are many animals which exhibit an astonishing mechanical skill. They are great artisans performing operations which at first glance would seem to indicate a reasoning intelligence, but which on closer examination must be explained is due to the possession of remarkable instincts, which we've been discussing on these broadcasts. And what about the beaver? One of the gnawing mammals or rodents, a relative of the squirrel, but living in the water. At one time the beaver was to be found throughout the forest regions of the entire northern part of the northern hemisphere. It ranged over the whole of Europe and was the inhabitant of the British Isles until about the beginning of the eleventh century. Now, however, the European beaver is nearly extinct, and a similar fate presses hard upon its American brother. Its gradual disappearance is due, of course, to the value of its beautiful coat and fur, which has led to wholesale slaughter. The color of the long shining hair which covers the back of the animal is a chestnut brown, and the fine wool that lies next to the skin is a soft grayish brown. The animal is long and slender, of a total length of about three feet and a half, with a twelve inch tail flat, paddle shaped, and scale covered. The legs are short and strong, the hind feet are webbed, thus adapting it for swimming. The flat tail makes an excellent rudder. It used to be thought that the beaver used this tail as a trowel to apply mud to the outer surface of the dams and lodges, but there is no reason to believe this to be true. As a matter of fact, exaggeration is not necessary in describing the accomplishments of this capable builder. The simple truth is amazing enough. Safety from their enemies is provided by their ability to swim and dive and to remain underwater for as long as fifteen minutes. Also, their nocturnal habits and their wide range of diet make for prolonged life. They can eat many different kinds of vegetable food and show great cleverness in secreting twigs and branches for the sake of the bark, which is one of their chief articles of diet. They live a communal life, display an anxiety to help one another with an inborn efficiency which merits our admiration. Their favorable home is beside some small stream which has its course through well wooded country. They prefer willows, birches, maples, and poplars because they like the bark of these trees. They know how to fell trees, often up to sixteen inches in diameter. With the chisel edged front teeth, the beaver cuts two parallel furrows across the grain of the wood and And then wrenches off the part between in a succession of chips. Next it makes other parallel lines and gouges off another circle of chips. It goes on doing this until an hourglass excavation has been made around the tree, which then falls. The tree usually falls directly across the stream, and those who have written in two glowing terms about the skill exhibited have told us that the beaver calculates carefully just how to cut through the tree so that it falls exactly in the right place. Now, how do you attribute this great power to a beaver, to the kin of a squirrel? Now, it is true that there are times when the tree falls the wrong way, but in the vast majority of the cases that thing falls just exactly where the beaver wants it to. The fact is that this couldn't be something that a beaver learned in a carpentry school. The dams that they build bring about a depth of water sufficient to erect a series of lodges or houses in which they can live in safety from their enemies and store their food. These remarkable structures are frequently more than a hundred and fifty yards long. They run across the stream from bank to bank. By means of these dams, beavers are able to convert even small rivulets into large pools of water, using the felled tree which is cut up into lengths of five to six feet. They fill in the gaps with smaller sticks, roots, grasses, and moss, all plastered with mud and clay, in a most workmanlike manner until the whole structure is made perfectly watertight. The lodge is a dome shaped structure composed of sticks, grass, and moss, all woven together and plastered with mud, increasing in size and in the thickness of the walls year by year as fresh material is added for repairs. Within this dome shaped house is a central chamber with its floor a little above the level of the water, and with two shafts which have their outer apertures above the water, and beneath the water, I should say. One of these shafts is driven at a straight and moderate line. It is up this that the beavers drag the pieces of wood and bark to be stored in the lodge to form the winter food supply. The other shaft is more abrupt in its descent, often winding in its course, and it's said to be the usual means of entrance and exit. The central chamber varies in size, but the larger one measures seven to eight feet in diameter and two to three feet in height. The floor is snugly carpeted with grass, bark, and wood chips. Some beaver lodges are fifteen to twenty feet in diameter and seven or eight feet high, but the thickness of the walls leaves even in larger structures a living room of only about seven feet in diameter and three feet in height, accommodating half a dozen animals. The beavers will be once in a year, bear three to five in a litter, and most colonies will be a group of families dwelling together quite socially. There are many interesting points to the beaver dam and houses. Occasionally the branches which have been built into the dam begin to grow and sprout into rooted bushes, and this strengthens the construction, hiding it in green in the summer. The canals built by these animals excite our admiration. As long as there are suitable trees near their lodges, beavers have no need of canals, but as the trees are gradually destroyed and the animals are forced to go farther and farther afield and source of the food, if the felled trees are beside the water, well and good, for the branches cut into short sections and can be carried into their mouths as they swim, and their front paws are used like hands to grasp whatever they can hold, as they are not needed in swimming. But when the trees are some distant overland, the beavers don't drag the trees that they cut down over the ground, but they actually build canals with their heavy bodies and short legs. These canals are very remarkable, some are several hundred feet in length. And often they make a shortcut between bends in a snaky stream. Many lodges are built around a big beaver pond and make a beaver village. And here we see the operation of the strange and fascinating instinct, if you will, of animals. The beavers live to provide for themselves and family, they labor to produce and maintain a home, all their efforts are in the direction of living safely and comfortably, and they seem to look ahead, providing themselves with uh ample stores of food supply for the winter. And how marvelous this is of a picture that God wants to show us. We provide for a home during our earthly life, but do we provide for an eternal home? We provide for a temporary dwelling down here, but what about an eternal dwelling when when we have to leave and and move out of this uh not just the house that you may live in, but the physical body that you're living in? For the Lord Jesus Christ said in my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there ye may be also. Now, you think about this. One day you're going to have to move out of your home, your dwelling place, your your beaver dam. And no matter how intelligently and wisely and marvelously uh you've constructed that home in which you live, you are going to have to move out of it. Now, where will you move to? There are two destinations according to the Bible. One is hellfire, prepared for the devil and his angels, where God is not willing that any man should ever spend eternity, but all those who reject God's offer of eternal life must dwell forever in what the Bible calls eternal death or the second death. But the other destination is a wonderful, glorious, marvelous place called heaven that the Lord Jesus Christ has prepared for those that love him and receive his gift of salvation. And you can have a home in heaven, you can have a place prepared for you, ready and waiting for you to move into. Just the moment you draw your last breath, even as the Apostle Paul said, in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, absent from the body and present with the Lord. You can't save yourself, you can't raise yourself from the dead, you can't get yourself to heaven or give yourself eternal life. But you can humble yourself, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust Him as your personal Lord and Savior. He loves you, wants to save you, and give you everlasting life. The Bible says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

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, JamesWaptist, our terminal audio page, Bible BaptistLand, or our website, BibleBaptistaland.com. Until next time, and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.