All Articles For All Thy Works Shall Praise Thee

Dr. Lanning is Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular Biology in California State University, LA and a member of Hope Protestant Reformed Church, Redlands, California. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63 Living organisms communicate in numerous ways. Humans and animals communicate through spoken language or audible sounds, gestures, postures, and physical contact. Some animals, as well as plants and single-celled organisms, even communicate through secreted chemicals. From a cell biologist’s perspective, the individual cells of our bodies are also constantly...

Previous article in this series: March 15, 2016, p. 278. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, highly toxic gases, such as ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide, were used as refrigerants. Due to their toxicity and a number of fatalities in connection with leaks of these chemicals, they were replaced by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—laboratory-built compounds composed of carbon, hydrogen, fluorine, and chlorine atoms. In 1928, Thomas Midgley, Jr. from General Motors synthesized the first CFCs. By 1930, Dupont and General Motors were cooperatively producing Freon (Dupont’s trademark name for CFCs) in large quantities. Freon was a nontoxic, nonflammable substance that...

Previous article in this series: March 15, 2015, p. 283. Previously in this rubric we have examined some of the main characters in the elegant book of creation and examined how they illustrate the wisdom of God as well as other important spiritual truths. Recently, we examined oxygen and considered it from the perspective of its absolute necessity for daily life, not only that of humans, but also that of creatures. We now turn our attention to oxygen again, but this time from the perspective of a lesser known form of oxygen—ozone. For many of us, our knowledge of ozone...

Dr. Looyenga teaches in the Science Department at Calvin College and is a member of Faith Protestant Reformed Church, Jenison, Michigan. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Psalm 19:1-2, 9 Among the many passages of Scripture that speak to the topic of revelation, Psalm 19 is perhaps the most explicit in its demonstration of how we are to know God. Situated side-by-side in...

Previous article in this series: March 1, 2015, p. 257. From the moment we are born till the day God calls us to our eternal home, we are in need of a constant supply of oxygen. The cells of our bodies depend on it—so much so that, under normal circumstances, we cannot live for much more than five minutes without oxygen. In the providence of God, we are supplied the necessary oxygen every moment of the day through complex processes, as seen in our previous article. However, there are many inhaled substances and many external circumstances that can disrupt these...

It is at this time of the year that we in the Protestant Reformed Churches and other Reformed churches that hold to the same Church Order (Art. 67) observe our annual Day of Prayer. We do so for no small reason. Each of us is truly dependent upon God’s daily provisions for our earthly existence. Though North American society has drastically changed in the past one hundred years, from the farmland to the office cubicle, we are no less dependent upon the physical creation for our daily existence. Long ago, in the era of the small family farm, people of...

Previous article in this series: May 1, 2014, p. 352. In our last article we began to look at some of the unique properties of water. We continue our examination of the properties of water based on its unique structure and polarity. We do so now, focusing on the goal of seeing the wisdom of God displayed in water. For God has created “all creatures as it seemed good unto Him, giving unto every creature its being, shape, form, and several offices to serve its Creator” (Belgic Confession, Art. 12). Every creature has been created and continues to be maintained...

The second article of our beautiful Belgic Confession describes God’s creation as a most elegant book, full of characters that lead us to contemplate His power and divinity. When we study these characters through the spectacles of Scripture we learn blessed spiritual truths. What or who are these characters that lead us to contemplate the invisible things of God? Certainly they include the aspects of creation that one readily sees, such as mighty mountain ranges, fluffy white snowflakes, and migrating geese. But they also include things not so readily seen, including nitrogen gas molecules, DNA, and even your gall bladder....

Thirty-five years ago NASA launched two space-probes within 16 days of each other. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent into space to gather information about some of the more distant planets in our solar system. With those original mis­sions now completed, the probes continue on through space and are on the verge of discovering more interest­ing information about interstellar space. Many of these space missions conjure up debate concerning the worth and wisdom of such costly endeavors. Regardless of what motives man may have in such investigations, we can consider these voyages and the data that is gathered in...

On February 15, a 130-foot wide asteroid, named DA14, raced through Earth’s at­mosphere at some 17,200 miles above its surface—a close shave in astronomical terms. Although first observed in 2012, the asteroid has been circling the sun with an orbit similar to that of Earth. Conse­quently, its orbital path at times will intersect very close to Earth’s orbital path around the sun—as it did earlier this year, resulting in the “close” encounter. Coincidentally, earlier that same day a meteor crashed through the atmosphere and exploded ap­proximately 12 miles above the Earth’s surface (about 40 miles away from Chelyabinsk, Russia). These...