I want to tell you a story. A story that will test your ability to believe it. It is a true story – well, I’ll let you decide if you think it is true.
Once upon a time – wait – let’s start over. Many years ago, in a large metropolitan European city, an artist who studied the Bible and believed in God wanted to prove to his friends and associates that his beliefs were in harmony with sound, rational thinking.
He had tried before but his attempts were always met with some alleged “contradiction” or mistake in the Bible. In his studio he searched his array of paintings in hopes of finding just what would work.
One day it came to him. Gazing at a picture of the famous “Mona Lisa” he knew just what he needed to do. Immediately he looked for the largest portrait board he could find. Turning the board over, he placed it on an equally large, quarter inch thick piece of clear plastic, and then after measuring it, cut it into forty equal sized squares. But before he cut them up he numbered them on the back in order, one through forty.
When he cut the board into the forty equal squares he sent one to each of his associates asking them to paint something on the one they received. They could paint anything – a landscape, a seascape, portrait, flowers, whatever they chose, and no one was to know what the others were doing.
Every day, as the squares were returned, he placed them face down in their corresponding number so they would be just right. Finally, the last square was returned and put in its appropriate place on the clear plastic. He took a sheet of plywood, pressed the two together and stood it up against the wall of his shop.
Don’t forget what had been done. Forty different artists had painted different things on each portion of the whole. No one had directed their work, they just arbitrarily painted their own preferences. There was no order, no pattern to their work, and the finished product was a montage of randomness, coincidence, and we might say, “natural selection.”
He did not know for sure what he would see, but he knew it would be nonsense, for no direction, no oversight had guided the brushes of the artists.
In his final step he turned the accumulated squares over and stepped back to view the chaos he expected. To his surprise and shock, what he saw was an exact replica of the “Mona Lisa.” The strange smile was just as the original artist had painted it. He could not believe it! It ran against all that he had ever learned! It was an impossibility, but there it was, right in front of him.
Now, this is where you must decide if the story is true or false. Is it possible that forty artists could, with no oversight or guidance, just by accident, perfectly replicate that famous painting? Were his eyes deceiving him? Had he lost his mind? Or…? What he had expected was chaos, gobbledygook! But what he saw was just the opposite.
Can you believe this story? Of course, you don’t believe this story. The mathematical probability of that taking place is so minuscule that no rational scientist would consider it even a remote possibility.
Our artist cleared out his store window and placed the “painting” in plain sight. Everyone walking down the street could see it. Under it he placed a sign that read:
“This is what happens when forty men work without direction or supervision. This is CHAOS!”
Next to the “painting” he placed an open Bible. Near the Bible was another sign that read:
“This is what happens when forty men work under God’s divine oversight and direction. This is INSPIRATION!”
The story itself is true, except for the “Mona Lisa” part. But you knew that. No one would even think of suggesting that part to be true, for it flies in the face of everything man has known for centuries. Order doesn’t just “happen.” Chaos does not automatically change itself into order. Even science will tell you that. Just leave your garden alone for a few weeks and see whether chaos turns to order. The same would be true with music, carpentry or logic.
When you look at the ocean tides, they are predictable to the minute. Sunrise and sunset. The principles of chemistry, mathematics, engineering.
What do you think the artists who contributed to this experiment thought? Were they surprised when they saw the finished product? Do you really think they expected order to come from chaos?
This world is the product of God’s powerful hand. “In the beginning God created…” is the only plausible answer to the question of earth’s origin. Don’t you forget it for a moment! The Bible is the work of forty men who wrote under the supervision of that Creator God. That’s not only true, but it also makes perfect sense!
