The Pocket Knife

We'd hiked nearly a third of the way up the mountain. I was starting to realize that either Table Rock had grown steeper since my ascent 20 years ago, or that my stamina was not what it used to be. I've come to the conclusion that it's amazing how much a mountain can grow in only 20 years... Anyway, the boy scouts and I were still on the first leg of the hike, and "some of us" were feeling a little winded, so we picked a spot by a huge boulder, took off our packs and enjoyed the morning air. My son, Nathan, was with me, and one of the other scouts, also named Nathan, was bursting at the seams with an energy supply from where I cannot imagine. Big Nathan, as we call him, decided to scale the boulder while we were taking in the scenery. He darted from one edge to the other, and at one point proclaimed that he had found a pocket knife at a well worn resting spot along the rock surface. He brought it down, and sure enough, some hiker had left the knife probably after cutting up an apple on a break. "Lucky find," we all thought and soon mounted up and went on our way toward the summit.

I hadn't really thought much more about that knife until one evening not long ago I caught a show on one of the science channels about the dinosaurs. The narrator, matter of factly, informed the viewer that these incredible creatures had evolved separate lines from one common cell in the depths of our great oceans. The concept that something had "created" the creature or even created the cell never even merited a single thought. No, scientists luckily found evidence of the dinosaur preserved in fossilized stone, and their resounding conclusion is that the giants appeared by adding random chance with random elements against the backdrop of billions of years. What an incredible faith they have!

Back to the knife. I can't help but wonder how many scientists would come to a similar conclusion upon finding Big Nathan's knife. Could not nature, given random chance, elements and time litter the earth with various steak knives, fishing knives, carving knives, etc.? Truth is, the very idea of nature producing such objects without intelligent direction is ludicrous by any reasonable standard. Nathan knew what he'd found; he had found a knife. There is no doubt, zero, none, that it was lost by another hiker. No reasonable person would seriously argue that this simple, inanimate object made by the hand of man could ever be produced by random chance, elements and time. The knife cannot speak, still through its design, it proclaims the existence of its creator. How much more can that be said of the astonishing complexity of the living creature? Are we to believe that by chance that which the mind of man cannot even conceive and hand of man cannot duplicate, simply came to be? Simply said, this cannot be.

All of creation proclaims the existence of its Creator. The creation is His, the design is His, we are His, and of this there is no doubt!

"For the invisible things of him 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." Romans 1:20