God of Creation: Hormones and Radio Waves

The most powerful forces in your life may be the ones you barely notice. We start with a simple claim rooted in Romans 1: the invisible God makes Himself known through visible creation, so the world around us is not random noise but a witness. Then we zoom in on the human body and the endocrine system, where tiny ductless glands release hormones that “excite” organs into action. Adrenals that steady you in crisis, a thyroid that fuels drive, a pituitary that regulates growth, all of it works like a quiet chain of command that points to design, purpose, and an all-wise Creator.

From there, we draw a straight line into everyday Christian life. Not everyone is on a platform, and not every role looks impressive, but the “intermediaries” matter. Andrew’s quiet act of bringing Peter to Jesus becomes a picture of what encouragement, prayer, giving, and faithful helps can do. You may never make headlines, but you can still be the spark that stirs someone else to obey God.

We also talk radio waves, vibration, and how the eye and ear receive messages through frequencies we cannot see. That turns into a warning and a hope: repeated small inputs shape us. A tiny cork can eventually set a heavy steel bar trembling, and small, repeated compromises can do the same to a soul. The answer is not self-rescue but surrender, illustrated by a high-wire story that lands on the central gospel invitation: trust Jesus Christ enough to let Him carry you all the way through.

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Transcript

Welcome And The God Of Creation

Endocrine Glands And What Hormones Do

The Andrew Principle In God’s Work

Radio Waves As A Picture Of Prayer

How Small Repeated Sins Shake Us

Sway With God On The High Wire

Trusting Christ And Closing Invitation

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Thank you very much. Good day. Greetings. I welcome 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 you're tuned in to the Preaching of the Cross radio broadcast, and we hope that you'll stay with us, whether you're in a car, in your home, uh perhaps on the job, in the office somewhere. We hope that you'll just uh stay with us for the next thirty minutes or so for a uh Bible study in our series on the God of Creation. Now, we've been talking for for quite some time now about the various aspects of the world of nature, as it's called, uh, which prove a creator, which prove an all-wise, almighty, all-knowing intelligence behind the things that we see in the physical world round about us. After all, the Bible says in Romans chapter number one, that the invisible things of Him, speaking of God, are clearly seen. That is, God is unseen and invisible, but the things which God has created and made that are clearly seen reveal to us, the Bible says in Romans 1, his eternal power and his Godhead, and if we look round about us in the world, the Bible says we have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God and not believing in God, and so that's been our theme for the past several broadcasts, this matter of the God of creation. The newer knowledge in our world has brought to attention the functions of the ductless or endocrine glands in the human body, and we want to talk about them a little bit on the program today. These glands have never been understood until the present quarter century, and the more conservative scientists have not been able to endorse all the claims made by some extremists as to the influence of these glands on growth in character. Taking the findings agreed upon by all so that there need be no controversy as to the fundamental facts, these glands hold a place among the most interesting and important of physical functions. The chief work of the endocrine glands seems to be that of secreting and pouring into the bloodstream certain excitants called hormones. These hormones or hormones do not perform any other duty so far as known than stimulating organs or tissues to perform their separate duties. This office is what makes them or gives them the name of hormones, taken from the Greek meaning I excite. The hormone excites organs to their possible operations. They perform the duty of the energizer, if you will. They act as intermediaries between nature's casual force and her specific executive administrators. Hores neither sign nor perform, but carry the decree from the source to the active working center. In themselves, they would seem to be of little importance, having no particular place and being so inconspicuous, and yet without this office of regulation and stimulation, all the essential functions of the body would cease or would make monstrosities of us all. To be more specific, let us note the work of some of these hormones. Beginning with the adrenals, situated just above the kidneys, we find that these glands secrete and throw into the bloodstream a mysterious something that gives courage in time of need. These are known as the crisis glands, because of their assistance to moral tone and physical strength at those junctures of life when the battle is at its height. Without this, the soldier would be lost on the field, the debater would lose his nerve, the struggle in any department of activity would end in defeat. The hormone does not enter directly into the fray, but excites to activity those resources so necessary to accomplishment. Another interesting gland is the thyroid, known as the pep gland. Here we find the hormone of vitality, that mysterious something that calls all the forces of vim and vigor into play. One richly endowed with this shows intensity of application. People wonder how he keeps up his activity and strength. He pushes business and becomes high powered in whatever line he is. If it is a woman, she is of the life of the party and the wonder of less conspicuous females. Such persons are known as smart, active, vivacious, though they may have no better equipment than the average. The secret lies in the stimulating hormone that pushes the various organs to their capacities. Perhaps the mute and glorious Miltons of the village churchyard have had as great a capacities of the brain and nerve as those who found their way to fame, but the stimulant was lacking, and the soul powers failed. One more example will suffice. The pituitary is a tiny gland about the size of a pea, lying in a bony cradle at the base of the brain. Small as it is, this gland has two lobes, the anterior, which sends out a hormone that regulates the growth of the bones. Why are some men giants and others dwarfs? The answer is that the pituitary body has failed to throw its hormones into the blood to regulate growth. The most of us are normal because of the activity of this mechanism of such insignificant size that it might appear almost useless. The posterior lobe of this gland secretes another hormone that tones the muscles, especially involuntary muscles, whose offices are so closely connected with the vital functions. The importance of hormones is apparent. No one of them is of consequence except as a link in a chain. Not one builds tissues or executes a vital function, but as an excitant each is all necessary, and without it, the forces of life would run riot. In the physical economy of man each plays the part of an accessory, an intermediary, a servant, if you will, but as a contributor to the development and power of man as a whole, it stands out dynamically. Hormon have their analogy in human society. Usually we point to the conspicuous characters of history and the achievements of such personalities have fired many of us with hot ambition. Lives of great men all remind us that we can make our lives sublime as the echo of a universal belief and a common desire, an idea that may be tempered with a more scientific consideration. Too little credit is given the intermediary influence of the vast majority of mankind who act as excitants to the genius of the few who are outstanding as executives. It's recorded, for example, in the Bible of Andrew. He was a poor fisherman. He met Jesus of Nazareth. He was charmed with his personality and brought his brother Simon Peter to meet his newfound friend. Now it's not recorded in the New Testament or in tradition, even that Andrew ever did anything that was conspicuous in the College of the Apostles. He seems to have been one of those who mean well but lack initiative. On the other hand, Peter became the greatest of the apostles in some ways, the most aggressive of all the disciples, figuring notably in the spread of early Christianity. The best thing Andrew ever did was act as an excitant to his brother, the man who did what he himself never actually accomplished. From which we may lay down the broad dictum that if you cannot yourself be a great contributor to the social or spiritual needs of the world, you can at least play the part of a social hormone and stimulate someone else who can. While this may not contribute greatly to personal pride or gratify the ego, it should give the satisfaction of having a great place in God's work, for God places all the members of the body where it pleases him. He gives one man this gift and one man another gift, and the purpose of each and every gift is to minister to the entire body of the Lord Jesus Christ and bring the whole body to perfection. So you say, Well, I don't have a great uh a great function, I'm not a great uh mover of men, I don't have a great ministry and accomplish a great deal. But perhaps through your prayers, your encouragement, perhaps through uh your giving and your helps, perhaps through your uh your kindly word or pat on the back, you can excite, excite and stimulate someone who has some what you might think greater gift to the exercise and use of that gift, and your work is equally as important as theirs, for without your acting as a stimulant, they might not ever rouse uh to the occasion and and get the work done that God has them to accomplish. So the part played by the hormone may not get a place on the front page of the daily press, but the names that appear there owe their publicity to the stimulus of the inconspicuous. One of the most uh noteworthy things about the body of the Lord Jesus Christ and about the great church that He has built and established is that each and every member, no matter how seemingly small, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has a very vital and very important function, and all the members of that body must minister one to another if the body is to reach its full stature and measure of maturity. So don't ever let Satan deceive you into thinking that you're not important or you're not essential because you're not in the forefront and you're not visible, and you can't uh uh you don't see great accolades being heaped upon you by those who see and behold what you're accomplishing for Jesus. You just fill the place that God gave you, and God will reward you abundantly. God has plenty of good gifts and rewards for those that serve Him faithfully and acceptably. Now, I want to talk also today on the program about uh radio and vibration. That seems like it would be an appropriate subject to talk about on a radio program. But you know, since the arrival of radio, many people have said, now I see how it is possible for prayer to reach God. Some never dreamed that we could reach one another without physical means, but radio has stimulated the imagination until uh now I can see that in some immaterial way I may reach God wherever he may be. Many people said that in the in the early days of radio or or felt it or expressed it in some form. Why does it take radio to make us believe that God hears prayer, though? We ought to believe it just because it's written in the Bible, but it's nice of God to uh to show us these things in the physical world round about us to help us along. Why was it once necessary to produce miracles to make people believe that the word of a prophet was true? Why must we always be measuring the reality of the spiritual with a yardstick of the physical? Whatever the answer, the fact remains. We climb toward God by a stairway whose steps are familiar facts of the visible world. Jesus often spoke in parables. He pointed to things that people could see and people could could uh could understand to make them understand things that they could not see, such as the phenomena of radio. It's due to waves and a highly sensitive medium, uh like ether almost. We have always been familiar with waves on the ocean and the vibration of a tensely stretched string, but the thought of a practical application of this back and forth movement arrived very late in human history when the scientist explained some things about light and sound. Even now many people are not aware of the relationship between seeing, hearing, and radio, yet the action is parallel in all. What the radio machine is to waves in the air, the eye is to waves of light. For the eye is a remarkable organ, whether of the fox, a horse, or a cat, or even of the snake, the spider or the fly. The focus of the human eye can be instantly changed from a perceiving distance of nine inches to that of nine miles in a fraction of a second. It can quickly adjust to less or more light. More than five hundred expressions of the eye and its appendages have been cataloged, as one can readily believe, who has seen Clara Beau or Betty Thompson or uh some famous uh actress performing. Uh I don't know who they are in our day and time. Uh I tell you something, you get saved and get away from that uh movie crowd and that TV business, and you kind of uh lose touch with the uh with the folks of of our day, but during the early days of radio and the early days of film, uh some of these uh women were just quite remarkable in the things that they could do with their eyes, not so much so now since we've got the uh the what I want to say, the the sound track added the movies. But you know, back in the days when when all the words had to be conveyed simply by facial expressions and hand gestures, uh you've got to hand it to some of those uh people that acted in those silent movies. They really did uh quite a job in getting the point across, but with what? With the marvelous eye and facial uh muscles and nerves and so forth that God Almighty had created. The remarkable thing about the eye is the retina. An enlargement and specialization of the optic nerve. This retina is composed of eleven layers, the tenth of which is called Jacob's membrane, in which the rods and cones peculiarly adapted to receiving vibrations of light give us the sense of color. Now, you know the world can't get away from the Bible. Even the scientists and the physicians that uh don't profess to believe it, they call those uh rod and cone shaped items, those rods they call them Jacob's membrane. And I wonder how many you just next time you're at the at the eye doctor, uh you just ask him why they call those things Jacob's rods and uh see if he knows anything at all about the story in the book of Genesis of the rods placed in the uh watering troughs and the feed troughs uh to make the uh speckled of the ring straight uh animals breed uh more prolifically and see what he says. But the Bible runs the world. Whether whether the world knows it or not, or acknowledges it or not, uh the uh the Bible runs the world. Now, this uh Jacob's membrane is, as we said, peculiarly adapted to receiving vibrations of light and give us the sense of color. Without these rods and cones, all the world would appear as a monotonous outline, for there's no color in the objects themselves. This may sound like a strange thing to those who have not heard of it before, but every object gives off a different vibration of light. And when these vibrations reach the rods and cones, they stimulate the optic nerve, which carries the impression through half a dozen portals to the visual center in the back of the brain. And we see objects as blue, red, orange, and so on. When an object in the light gives off vibrations at the rate of three hundred and ninety three million millions per second, the receiving apparatus translates the sensation into what we call red. But the thing is not red, red is a sensation. When another object gives off four hundred and thirty six million millions of vibrations per second, the rods and cones stimulate the optic nerve and we get the impression of yellow. The only difference is in the number of vibrations. When still another object gives off seven hundred and fifty six million millions per second, we see violet. In each case, the color is not in the thing perceived, but in the sensory apparatus of the brain. Actually, we're dealing with different rates of oscillation. When the number of vibrations is less than what gives us red, we have infrared or more than violet, we have ultraviolet, neither of which can be seen. The visual apparatus is limited in both directions. In the same way, what we call sounds are impressions the brain gets through the receiving station known as the ear. A very low rate is not perceptible to the eye, but the ear registers anything between about fourteen and seventy three thousand seven hundred. If there were no ear, there would be no sound. The only difference would be difference in vibrations and wavelengths. When a piano or a violin gives off two hundred and fifty six vibrations, it registers in the hearing area as a middle C, as two hundred and thirteen registers as A. But sound and light do not travel at the same rate of speed. Light moves at a rate of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second. Don't try it on your stopwatch, you won't be able to measure it. While sound trundles along at only about eleven hundred feet per second. If you can count two between the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder, then the flash was about twenty two hundred feet away. In August 1883, the volcano Krakatoa, east of Java, on an island in the Strait of Sunda, blew up, taking thirty thousand lives. The sound waves must have been immense, for the eruption was heard two thousand miles away, like the firing of heavy artillery, but traveling at the rate of a little more than seven hundred miles an hour, it took eighteen hours for the sound waves to reach the opposite side of the globe. The atmospheric disturbance was so great that instruments continued to register the reverberations for more than five days. Between the lower vibrations that are received by the ear and the higher which are received by the eye is a great range not received by any organ of the body, except as heat, at least consciously, and above the violet rays is another great sweep not appropriated by any sense. Perhaps some of these affect the nerves of the brain, but we do not know it as such, or know of it as such. Perhaps new discoveries will open the way for an immense utilization of these silent forces. Perhaps as something there is a vibration of thought, and some of the unexplained mental phenomena may be due to causes that will someday be known as, for example, telepathy, which is not yet scientifically demonstrated, but authentic examples of which seem to be quite numerous. Perhaps again, radio does throw some light on prayer as a means of communicating with Almighty God. Perhaps the same Holy Spirit sends out messages that are received but not properly credited. Any one of these, perhaps, is a good guess as radio was fifty years ago, but radio is here. It is not too much to assume that in the sphere of the infinitely fine processes of the unseen, new discoveries will be made that will be more wonderful than those we are becoming familiar with in the material world today. Many students of psychic life are anticipating this, but as we know from the Bible, God will cut them off. He's not interested in you approaching him through psychic phenomena, but through not through your spirit, which is dead because of sin, but through his holy spirit, which he gives to you when you trust his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and receive by grace his great salvation. But there are at least two practical applications one or two anyway, that may be made on the basis of our present knowledge. For one thing, something may be made of the fact of prolonged vibration. I do not vouch for the following experiment, but it's on good authority given by several eminent scientists that if you hang up a five hundred pound bar of steel by a chain and strike it regularly with a little cork suspended by a silken thread, you would scarcely expect an impression, a quarter of an ounce of soft cork against a solid steel bar, and after ten minutes there is no effect, and after twenty minutes nothing perceptible. But after thirty minutes, a distinct quiver begins to move through the mass of steel. The accumulation of minute shocks has registered throughout the aggregation of fine particles where each communicates to the others its own vibration. And these states are parallel. A light impingement of the trivial may produce no conscious impression on the mental habit, but the repeated attack of the apparently insignificant may set the whole nature a quiver. Now what am I saying? Here's this great steel bar, five hundred pounds. It's held by a chain, and a little cork ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, and eventually the consistent pinging of that little cork builds up an accumulation of little shocks. The shock builds upon shock and the shock builds upon shock until eventually the steel is actually vibrating. This this 500 pound bar of steel sent to vibrating and shaking by a little tiny cork striking against it. Now, these little sins, these little uh habits, these little yieldings to unclean spirits, these little uh strayings from the truth of God, these little lapses into the old nature and the old way of life. You say, Well, Brother James, I've got a great salvation, I've got a strong and mighty God, I've got a tremendous relationship with the Holy Spirit, I know the Bible. Yes, and that mighty five hundred pound bar of steel certainly had no reason to believe that that little cork could set it all in motion and shake it all up. And in the same way, it's not that little sin, it's the continual yielding, it's the continued allowance of sin to have a place in our lives. You know, the The Bible says, Neither neither give place to the devil. Don't give him any ground of operation. Don't give him any place in which to to work in your life. Because just as surely as that little cork striking consistently, consistently, over and over again against that great steel could set it to vibrating, so is sin continually is allowed to reach your soul and spirit. It'll shake you all up. There's another uh uh what do I want to say? Another purely uh scriptural inference uh and that is that the human personality uh may achieve its best by falling into rhythm, if you will, with uh that uh motion of God. God has a certain way that he wants you to walk, certain way that he wants you to talk and act and dress, certain way that he wants you to conduct yourself, and uh how much happier, how much more blessed will we be if we uh, as they say in our generation, if we tune in and get on the same wavelength as the message and communication that God is sending out. You know, half a century ago a man was going to walk in a wire across Niagara Falls with another man on his shoulder. I wouldn't want to be either one of the men. But after weeks of preliminary practice as the final moment for the adventure drew near, the rope walker cautioned his young colleague and he said, We're about to risk our lives. I am to walk the wire. The whole responsibility is mine. You have nothing to do but match my movements. If I sway to the left, let yourself sway with me. If I sway to the right, you do the same. Under no circumstances are you to try to save yourself. There must be only one will in this adventure, and that will is mine. You must submerge your will and ensure perfect harmony with my will, for without perfect unison, we're both lost. There's only one thing for you to do, and that is sway with me. As they drew near to the opposite side, the unexpected happened. The long vibration of the wire broke in the center into two, and each of these broke again in the two and so on, according to the law of vibration until the shortened wave like movements became so violent that the man could scarcely keep his feet where he placed them. It was a perilous moment. But the feat was accomplished and the spectacular escapade was a success, and of course, obviously took front page news on the papers the following day. After this, the young man who had played the secondary part, he settled down to private life, he married, and he became an active leader in the Christian Endeavor Society and an elder in the Presbyterian Church. He used to say, I learned more religion on the wire that day than I learned in all my life. I learned that the only sane and safe way to live is to submerge my will, to forfeit my will, and to sway with God. My friend, if God says lean to the right, lean to the right. If God says lean to the left, lean to the left. Jesus Christ said, If you seek to save your own life, you'll lose it. But if you'll lose your life for my sake, if you will fully and completely put your faith and trust in me, I'll save your life. Now you know something? You and I are not asked, and if we were asked, I don't know about you, but I would definitely say absolutely not. There is no way I would get on any man's shoulders and let him carry me on a wire across the Niagara Falls or any other great chasm. There isn't any way I'd do that. But you know something? I want to reach the far shore where that land of heaven is. I want to get home to heaven. There's a great expanse, there's a great cavern between earth and heaven, there's a great uh universe between earth and heaven, and I I just can't get there on my own. There isn't any way I can do it. I I know good and well I can't, and you can't either. And the Lord Jesus Christ comes and he says, I'll tell you what, if you'll just receive me, if you'll, as you will, uh climb on my shoulders, I'll carry you across. My friend, do you trust Jesus Christ as much as that one man trusted the other man? To climb upon his shoulders and ride across that great expanse of water, knowing one false move and they both would lose their lives. My friend Jesus, he's promised he'll carry us through to the other side, he won't make a wrong step, he will not fall, he will not fail. But do you trust him enough to climb aboard and allow him to carry you to glory? That's what it is to to really be safe, to really be born again, to to put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. It means I am not going to walk the wire behind him, I am not going to walk the wire in front of him, I'm not going to walk the wire by myself and have Jesus on the other side waiting to embrace me. If I succeed, I am going to climb atop his shoulders and allow him to carry me over himself. That's what it is to trust Jesus as your Savior. And if you've never done that, he's waiting right now to receive you. He wants to be your Savior. He has the power, the grace, the might, the majesty to be your Savior. He's simply waiting for you to put your faith and your trust in him. Oh, I hope and pray that this very day you'll call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Receive Him as your personal Lord and Savior.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

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, it's our YouTube channel at JamesFaptist. Our terminal audio page, Bible Baptistland, or our website, BibleBaptistoland.com. Until next time, and throughout eternity, make Jesus Christ be praised.