God's Second Book-Nature

God's first book is the Bible. It is His love letter to us. And his second book is nature, God's bouquet of flowers to us.

God created the heaven and the earth in 6 six days. What did God create on the sixth day? Land animals and the first man and woman. So we ourselves are a part of God's second book!

How is that so? Everything in the physical world of nature is an object lesson of God's love for us, of His salvation and of how we are to relate to Him and to each other. So even if we look at our own bodies, our bodies are also an object lesson from God. There is so much to learn about God just from our own bodies, but I'll just scratch the surface today.

How many body parts can you think of that come in pairs? Eyes, ears, arms, hands, legs, are just a few. There's even inside parts that come in pairs, like the kidneys and lungs.

Now here's a question for you. Why did God make us with two of so many things?

Genesis 1:26 " And God said, let us make man in our image, after our own likeness"

We were made in God's image, which means we were made to be like Him, in our character. He is loving, so we are to be loving. He forgives, so we are to forgive.

Now here's another tough question: Why did God make us with ten fingers? Why not 8, like so many cartoon characters? Or why not 12?

Let's look at another passage:

Matthew 22:34-40: "Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

How many commandments did Jesus say were the greatest? Two. Love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself." How many legs do we have? How many arms? Eyes? Ears?

And again I ask, why do we have ten fingers and ten toes?? Because all the Law and and the prophets hang on these two. The Ten commandments tell us how to love God and love your neighbor. That's the law. The prophets constantly called Israel back to obeying the ten commandments, which hang on the two greatest ones, love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So see? Even our own bodies are a part of God's second book. God is the greatest artist in the universe!

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I changed it to a bouquet of flowers for you. - Daryl

[ October 10, 2003, 09:13 PM: Message edited by: Daryl Fawcett ]

good idea, Daryl, thanks!

You are welcome!

But then, you could have changed it yourself.

Okay, this post has puzzled me in this sense. How can the bible be God's first book and nature second, when nature was created first? Several generations of God fearing people lived without having "the bible" so what was their "first book?"

Until the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt and Moses given the tablets of stone and plans were given to make the sanctuary, do we have the first "bible" written that can be passed on to future generations. So I guess that's why I am having difficulty understanding the terms.... just my thoughts...

Interesting thought, Steve.

I guess it really doesn't matter which one is God's first or second book. The fact is that God speaks through both.

One thought though is that the Word of God was verbally given to Adam and Eve from the day they were created onward. For instance, how would they know about the one tree they were not to eat from? Unless God had already given verbal instructions, how would Able know what type of sacrifice was acceptable to God, and how would Cain know what type of sacrifice was not acceptable to God? Also, how would Cain know that it was wrong to kill Able?

I believe that the written Word wasn't needed back then because all His created human beings had total recall or what we refer today as a photographic memory. It was only after the mind of man became so diminished, that the written Word became necessary beginning with Moses as its first author.

I guess you could say that God in a sense three books; the spoken Word, the natural Word (God's nature), and the written Word.

Daryl,
That is what I was thinking, before it was written it was verbally passed on from generation to generation.... That method then should be included as one of the ways God revealed Himself to us....

God's instructions, whether verbal or written, could be considered His first book, and God's nature, or creation, as His second book.

How does God speak to us through nature? And what is He saying? We live in a highly sanitized cultured suburban world, so it is easy to speak of well-ordered things. But look at this (Cheetahs prey on a young impala: First kill | BBC Earth):



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