We Are Born To Rule Series

David did not need a telescope to consider the heavens and the wonders of God's creation. What he

could see with the naked eye left him in awe at the majesty of God. Today we go far beyond the

vision of David, not only into the macrocosm of the vast universe, but because of new instruments we

know what David could never imagine. We know of the microcosm that God has created that is even

more basic to life on earth. Back in the late 80's Sallie Chisholm, a biological oceanographer at MIT

made a mind-boggling discovery about how God runs this world. She and her colleagues discovered

billions of trillions of zillions of plants that man never even dream existed. Man never dreamed that

plants could be so small.

It was only a few years earlier that Bob Guillard, the researcher who built up the famous Bigelow

collection of phytoplankton, said of these single cell plants of the ocean that he discovered, "A

hundred years of oceanography and the most abundant being in the world wasn't recognized by

anybody." But like some kind of sports record it soon fell, and is no longer the record holder, for

Chisholm discovered plants and even greater abundance. There are as many as 3 million of them in

every ounce of ocean water.

They were not discovered by a powerful microscope, but by a new tool called the flow

cytometer. Sea water is compressed into a thin stream and the cells are marched single file two

thousand per second past an interrogation point where they are bathed in laser light which causes

them to fluoresce. The color of the florescence indicates what pigment a cell contains. The cells then

can be separated into species much like you would distinguish a flow of Japanese and Swedes

without looking at them if you had information about their size and hair color. If you had a flow of

people all of whom had red hair, and none of them over 4 feet tall you would know you had

discovered a new people. That is how Chisholm discovered the new plant. They are 30 millionths of

an inch across with a unique type of chlorophyll.

You might say, "Who cares, and what difference does this make to us?" First of all, God made

them the most abundant form of life on this planet. Secondly, they keep us alive. They harness the

energy of the sun, and by the process of photosynthesis they produce the food of life for all the

creatures of the sea. They also take out of the air half of the carbon dioxide we put into it. If they

didn't do it the planet would warm up by the green house effect, and we would be the ones frying

instead of the fish of the sea.

The point of all this is that man is ever learning of the delicate balance of nature, and of how

God has made all of life to work together so that every part of nature is dependent upon every other

part. If man throws a monkey wrench into this beautiful living machine he makes a mess of it, and he

risks serious damage to his own well being. Christians are as likely to throw the system of nature

into imbalance as anyone. Christians have been major supporters of the philosophy that says nature

exists for our benefit, and so if we want to abuse it and misuse it that is our privilege. Much like the

Christian slave owners in early America, they feel they have the right to use what is their property

anyway they please. And they feel they have Scripture to back them up.

Here in Psa. 8:6 it says clearly, "You made him the ruler over the works of your hands; you put

everything under his feet." Man is made the ruler of nature, and he is made king of creation by the

Creator Himself. If we go back to Gen. 1:28 we read these first words of God to man: "Be fruitful

and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the

air and over every living creature that moves over the ground." The lion is not king of the beasts. Itis man, and he was put in charge by God and told to rule. None can argue with this clear revelation.

The problem comes because of the fall of man. He did not become the kind of ruler over nature that

God intended. Just as many of the kings over his people led them astray from his will, so man as a

ruler over nature abused his God-given power, and he became an enemy rather than a friend to

nature.

If we look at Adam before the fall we see the proper role of man in relationship to nature. In