That Everyone May Know His Works

The biggest thing we did over March Break was go to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto. It turns out that when you have four kids a family pass for the whole year is only $35 more. We can go back any time and both Julie and I can bring an adult guest free. It turns out that they are going to have an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls this Summer too! It is the largest exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls outside of Israel. Anybody wanna go? My treat!

The most interesting part of the day came at the beginning. High above the original lobby of the museum is a beautiful tile mosaic that reads “THAT ALL MEN MAY KNOW HIS WORKS”.

It is inspired by a quote from Job 37: 7

⁵ God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.

⁶ He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’

⁷ So that all men he has made may know his work,
he stops every man from his labor.

Job 37: 5 – 7

(I will have to think of that again sometime when I am snowed in, or held up because of weather.) I find it supremely ironic that those who work in the the Museum now would never consider the exhibits to be an evidence of the power of God. We talked to paleontologists who blithely described the variation in species from one age to the next but I was dazzled all day by the breath-taking variety that was seen in all the different creatures, either present day animals,

or animals long since gone.

To an uneducated observer all dinosaurs initially look alike but when you actually get down to inspecting them you discover fine details around the eye sockets, ridges that appear to be there just for decoration. Why all this diversity? An evolutionary biologist will say that these differences evolved because of the survival benefit they provided the animal (ridges made a particular dinosaur more attractive to a mate: more likely to pass on it’s genetic info) but that somehow just doesn’t account for the wild variety animals you can see at a museum like the ROM.

And what’s more, why are there so many different kinds of gems, crystals, and other kinds of rocks. Again, to the uneducated it just seems far too excessive a variety to just occur for no reason. Here the evolutionist can’t help me. Unless rocks start procreating (surely that isn’t happening right?) there is no survival benefit to all this variety.