"Look at nature. There is room within her vast boundaries for schools to be established where grounds can be cleared and land cultivated. This work is essential to the education most favorable to spiritual advancement; for nature's voice is the voice of Christ, teaching us innumerable lessons of love and submission and perseverance." (Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 178)
What's Going On In Nature and Why
There is a faulty view of God that gives Satan credit for creating. Satan can not create anything. Only God can create. It is God who designed creation and spoke it into existence, to function or behave according to his design. Satan cannot create a new design, but he can influence man to change the original one into a dysfunctional one. One in which all the parts are not operating according to the original design. This was done, and still is being done, by encouraging man to do things to creation that God has not told him to do. This is also done as Satan encourages man to not do the job he was given.
Cain did things his way. (Genesis 4:12) says, "When you till the ground it will no longer yield to you its strength. . ." (Ecclesiastes 10:17) says, ". . . my princes eat for strength." Food plants are to be strengthening. If they cannot strengthen sufficiently, they are unfit to maintain the life forces man and animals need to be free from sickness and disease. Also, they cannot keep the genes switched on that govern peaceful behavior as Isaiah describes in Isaiah 11:6-9, "And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."
What is this knowledge of the Lord Isaiah speaks of, that covers the earth with this good behavior? In the book Education, by E.G. White, we learn that nature is revealing God's character to us. "Although the earth was blighted with the curse, nature was still to be man's lesson book. It could not now represent goodness only; for evil was everywhere present, marring earth and sea and air with its defiling touch. Where once was written only the character of God, the knowledge of good, was now written also the character of Satan, the knowledge of evil. This knowledge of the Lord is the demonstration of His behavior, designed into creation. It is His characteristics exemplified in the actions of creatures and how the environment is designed to function. Desire of Ages, pages 20-21, says it this way: "The ocean, itself the source of all our springs and fountains, receives the streams from every land, but takes to give. The mists ascending from its bosom fall in showers to water the earth that it may bring forth and bud... Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory of our God to give...All things Christ received from God, but He took to give." (All living things take to give.) "No bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life. There is no leaf of the forest, or lowly blade of grass, but has its ministry. Every tree and shrub and leaf pours forth that element of life without which neither man nor animal could live; and man and animal, in turn, minister to the life of tree and shrub and leaf [carbon dioxide].
Good and evil, the character of God and the character of Satan need explanation. It is important to understand what the ancient Hebrew language meant by good and evil. "It should always be remembered that the Hebrew often relates descriptions to functionality. The world 'tov' [good] would best be translated with the word 'functional.' When [God] looked at His handiwork He did not see that it was 'good,' He saw that it was functional, kind of like a well-oiled and tuned machine. In contrast to this world is the Hebrew word "ra" [evil]. These two words, tov and raare used for the tree of knowledge of 'good' and 'evil.' While 'ra' is often translated as 'evil' it is best translated as 'dysfunctional.'" ( God made perfectly functioning creatures and environment. Their actions portrayed His character. Their behavior kept creation free from sickness and disease, and maintained peaceful behavior and a peaceful environment. What we did to them caused dysfunctional behavior.
Our Jobs and Their Effect
At creation Adam and Eve were given "moral responsibilities and obligations." Education, p. 20. "Useful occupation was appointed them as a blessing, to strengthen the body, to expand the mind, and to develop the character." (Education, p. 21)To them, "was committed the care of the garden, 'to dress it and keep it.' Genesis 2:15." (Education, p. 21) Sickness, disease and death, and now extinction, entered creation when Adam and Eve kept the garden their way. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Doing things our way leads to dysfunctional changes in nature that introduce disease, then sickness, then death and now extinction of species.
God foresaw man's disobedient behavior. So, at creation, He made genes that would work to repair the problems that we would cause. They were recessive genes, unseen and unused, until they were needed. As man damaged the environment, changes in the creatures began to show themselves. Some changes began to repair the damage; others were designed to preserve the vital forces in the populations. It is not a new creation of Satan when living things or the environment behave the way they do today. It is God's preplanned program to meet the damage He knew we would initiate. God knows the end from the beginning.
Nature's changes, from a paradise to what we see today, are God's judgments for our disobedient behavior,--His sentence inflicted upon creation. What was comfortable is now unpleasant and dangerous. What was satisfying now leaves us unfulfilled. What was peaceful has become aggressive and violent. We now see how God works with a dysfunctional world,--His verdict put into action. When recessive genes that heal or preserve the vital forces of a population are switched on, and other genes are switched off, in this adaptation of species, we see new facets of God's character in action. When inanimate forces of heat and moisture are ramped up to dissipate excesses, we're observing the "tough love of God."
Relationships
God did not create living creatures and the forces of nature to operate separate from each other. They all worked harmoniously to create a symphony of motion that maintained a paradise. They showed God's character that of a servant, as all creatures and the inanimate forces aided each other in living. They fed each other, helped each other with their habitat, and aided in reproduction. All things in nature influenced things around them to grow and increase in strength. Some of their influences were far reaching, even global. Some reached a few feet or only millimeters.
Symbiosis is the term used for this interrelated working of creatures and their environment. Mutualistic symbiosis simply shows one thing aiding another while the other aids it. Communalistic symbiosis is cycles of service where A helps B, B helps c, but only C helps A. These chains of helping another until the last one helps the first can be long and intricate.
Not all relationships are obvious examples of service. Parasitism is a relationship where a host species has within its population a pathogen that feeds upon the weak and consumes them. This relationship results in only those that are strong reaching reproductive age or having off-spring. The strong individuals can best survive the damaged environment and its influences because of their ability to adapt to it. These adaptive genes, created by God in the beginning, to operate in a damaged environment, have been switched on. Predation is a similar act of service where the strongest get to reproduce and spread their adaptive genes.
The relationships creatures have had with one another and the environment have changed since creation. Mankind has initiated these changes. Transpiration from vegetation, that modifies weather by keeping moisture and temperature at tempered levels, cannot serve to regulate weather when top soil is destroyed, so plants become weak or cannot grow. Weather changes from deforesting vast areas like the Sahara now create tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean that hit North America.
All green plants were given by God for food (see Genesis 1:30). Today, many are inedible weeds. Some of the changes in plants are to clean pollutants out of the soil, water, and air, and render them harmless in organic molecules. Lemma species, the common duckweed that forms a thin green layer of growth on ponds, is used in Europe in programs to detoxify polluted waters. Buttonweed and velvet leaf are triggered to grow in soil where methane toxins are produced by anaerobic decay fostered by our agricultural practices that compact the soil. Jimson weed, Daturastramonium, grows when ethane gases are produced in soil by our poor farming practices. Many species of weeds only thrive in the presence of water soluble nitrogen fertilizers, whether petrochemical or organic. In undisturbed natural settings of forests, savannas, and grass lands, more than 95% of the nitrogen used to grow the plants is derived from insoluble forms; very little water soluble nitrogen exists. These weeds cannot thrive there.
Fungus, like mycorhizal fungi that break phosphate loose from the soil and rock and feed it to the cells of plant roots, need an aerated soil for this operation. Tinier pathogenic fungi (like pithium and rhizoctonia root rots) replace them when we compact the soil with the fertilizers like anhydrous ammonia, heavy equipment or plowing when too wet. Bacteria, such as the air loving (aerobic) nitrogen fixing bacteria that feed plants nitrogen fertilizers for protein production, are replaced with pathogenic anaerobic bacteria when we compact the soil. They produce toxins like alcohols, formaldehyde's, acetones, and butane, methane, and ethane gases. Plants sickened by these toxins are deconstructed by parasites. Decomposing species of microbes and scavengers were never needed until mankind caused sickness and disease which led to death. Now the need to deconstruct the dead bodies into usable prefabricated building blocks exists. Other changes replace lost nutrients to the topsoil. Plants with taproots, like dandelion and thistles that go down deep with their roots and draw up calcium from the subsoil, replenish this necessary element to the topsoil. The topsoil lost is due to our poor agricultural practices of working the soil when too wet (which decreases the organic matter levels that hold it for the plant), erosion from not planting a cover crop or leaving plant debris to cover the topsoil and thus holding it in place, and using petrochemical nitrogen fertilizers that consume organic matter. Oxeye daisy thrives in topsoil with low calcium levels, yet has great quantities of it in their tissue from gathering it somehow. When they die each season the topsoil is replenished as their dead bodies are added to it upon decay. Cantaloupe plants gather boron in great quantities (300 times what's in the soil) to replenish the topsoil upon their decay.
The formation of harems and competition among males to control that harem, instead of each male having a mate, only allows the strong to sire young. Parasitism that devours the sick, weak and injured, as well as predation which does the same, leaves reproduction to the fittest individuals of a population. All these changes and more show God at work cleaning up the environment, maintaining vital forces in populations and repairing paradise.
Blessings or Curses
In Deuteronomy 28, God gives instructions to all mankind in these words to the people of Israel: "If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments . . . all these blessings shall come on thee...” Also, "if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes . . . all these curses shall come upon thee. . ." He says: carefully preserve these instructions and carry them out accurately and you will be blessed with the results (see Deuteronomy 28:1-10.) Do things your own way and you will be cursed with the results (See Deuteronomy 28:15-68). We're given the option of healthy and plentiful children, flocks, herds, and crops; to be able to lend and not have to borrow; to be protected from selfish enemies who would rather plunder us than obey God's ways and reap the same blessings; to harvest crops that will keep well when we store them; or to have big problems.
The curses are many and read like a list of what's going on today: pestilence (today, just about every commercial crop must be sprayed), lung disease, fevers, inflammation, extreme burning, murders, plant diseases, drought, enemies attacking us, boils, hemorrhoids, scab like eczema, itch with no healing. The list is horrible and continuous: madness, blindness, fearful hearts, oppression, robbery, unfaithful spouses, houses taken away, possessions taken away and no one to help get them back; sons and daughters gone and not there for one's elderly years; nations taking from nations and ruling over one another; much planted and little harvested; and then it gets worse. Finally, Israel, the people who were to preserve these commands and share the knowledge of them with the whole world, are taken into slavery with no one left on earth to redeem them (see Deuteronomy 28:15-68). Thankfully, God redeemed them.
Our Authorization to Alter Creation
In Genesis 1:28, God gave mankind dominion over all living creatures. That dominion was the boundaries of our responsibilities and moral obligations to all creatures; the scope of our influence upon all life forms. Our actions were capable of affecting all living things on earth. What we did, how we did it, where were we did it would bless or curse whatever creatures we touched by it. We could maintain a paradise, or alter it to what we see today.
The Hebrew word gaal, used by Moses and other Bible writers, is used in the King James Version about 65 times as "redeem." It is also used as "pollute" or "defile," about 10 times. Its full meaning indicates that mankind has the power to alter creation, to repair or redeem the damage he has done, or to further fowl or pollute our garden home. How we keep our earthly home by working the ground and caring for the plants (see Genesis 2:5, 15) determines whether we will alter it for good or evil, blessing or cursing. We can push forward to extinction or gently return to Eden. We can observe nature and follow the lesson plan it lays out for us to repair it, or we can pollute it to our extinction.
What we are Capable of Achieving
Global warming, the increase in CO2 levels in the air that change our climate, is considered a curse. This can be reversed in about 40 years, IF, we can learn from observing nature where the carbon (C of CO2) came from, and do the two things nature does to put it back and keep it there. The loss of carbon (C) from the organic matter or topsoil that covers the grazing lands and agricultural lands worldwide equals the amount of carbon (C) that's in the excess CO2 in the air. Following the grazing pattern of wild herds throughout the year, and returning to letting microbes supply the fertilizer for our crops, as nature has done for thousands of years, will solve the problem.
Plants gather most of the nourishment they need from the air. A primary part of this is CO2 (C+O2). They take enormous quantities of CO2 out of the air and leave much of the carbon (C) in the topsoil after they die and decay. The O2 goes back into the air as oxygen. Plants must be kept strong to do this by not over grazing them. Intensive grazing, where animals are confined to a small area to heavily graze, and then moved often so they eat the best and trample the rest, follows natures pattern. Wild herds, like the wildebeest and zebra of the Serengeti, graze together and move on, not returning till next year. Bison in North America grazed in herds that moved north and then south again over the course of the year. Their genes that guided them to stick together as a herd and to migrate over their circuit once or twice a year, gave plants the best growing conditions for the fastest rate of topsoil production. Strengthening plants to build topsoil sucks the CO2 out of the air at a tremendous rate.