Welcome to Authorized Sword Ministries. This is Lesson Three of our course In the Beginning: The Truth About Creation. Today's lesson is called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Design in Life and DNA.

We're glad you're back.

In Lesson One we saw that God made the world by His Word in six real days. In Lesson Two we looked up at the stars. Today we look much closer, down inside the tiny cells of our own bodies. What we find there is not an accident. It is a written message, and every message has an author.

Our Key Verse

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." — Psalm 139:14 (KJV)

David wrote those words thousands of years before anyone had a microscope. The more we learn about the body, the more true they sound.

Part One: DNA Is a Written Code

A Four-Letter Alphabet

Inside nearly every cell of your body is a long, twisted molecule called DNA. The U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, describes it this way. DNA is built from four chemical units, called A, T, C, and G, which work like a "genetic alphabet." The order of those letters "determines the meaning of the information," just as the order of letters determines the meaning of a word.

How much is written there? The same government institute says nearly every cell carries a full copy of about 3 billion of these letters, and that "with its four-letter language, DNA contains the information needed to build the entire human body."

Think about that. Your eyes, your heart, your hands, all spelled out in a code, before you were ever born. The psalmist said it like this:

"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." — Psalm 139:16 (KJV)

"In thy book all my members were written." That is a beautiful picture of what God has done.

Information Comes From a Mind

Here is the question every person has to answer: where does a written message come from?

In everyday life, we already know. A grocery list comes from somebody who wrote it. A computer program comes from a programmer. Nobody finds a book and thinks the ink spilled itself into sentences.

Dr. Werner Gitt, a German information scientist, made this point in an article published by Answers in Genesis. He wrote that every piece of information, if you trace it back to the beginning, needs "a mental source," and that "no information can exist without a will." Creation ministries call this the information argument. It does not prove God in a test tube, but it agrees with everything we see every day. Codes come from minds.

The Bible tells us whose mind wrote the code of life:

"For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God." — Hebrews 3:4 (KJV)

And the Bible tells us that God made all things by His Word:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." — John 1:1 (KJV)

"All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." — John 1:3 (KJV)

The God who speaks is the God who wrote the message in every cell.

Part Two: The Cell Is a Working Factory

Reading the Code

A code is only useful if something can read it. Inside your cells are tiny machines called ribosomes. The National Human Genome Research Institute says a ribosome "reads the messenger RNA sequence and translates that genetic code" into a string of building blocks that fold up into proteins. Proteins do most of the work in your body.

So the cell doesn't just store a message. It copies it, reads it, and follows the instructions, like a factory with a blueprint and a production line.

A Tiny Spinning Motor

Here's another example. Your body runs on a fuel molecule called ATP. The Nobel Prize committee, in its 1997 announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said a resting adult uses an amount of ATP each day equal to about half of their body weight, and during hard work it can reach almost a ton. Most of it is made by an enzyme called ATP synthase, which the Nobel committee called "an exceptional molecular machine." Its central part actually turns, like a tiny motor.

All the Parts at Once

Creation scientists point out something important here. The code needs the reading machines to be useful. But the reading machines are themselves built from instructions in the code. Which came first? A factory with a blueprint but no workers makes nothing. Workers with no blueprint make nothing. The parts need each other to work at all.

That is exactly what we would expect if a wise Creator made living things complete and working from the start, just as Genesis says:

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." — Genesis 1:24 (KJV)

Part Three: Mutations and Natural Selection

We want to be honest and careful here, because some Christians have used arguments that don't hold up. Creation ministries themselves warn against them.

What a Mutation Is

The National Human Genome Research Institute defines a mutation as "a change in the DNA sequence." Mutations can come from copying mistakes when cells divide, or from things like radiation or a virus. In other words, a mutation is a typo in the code.

Can a Mutation Help?

You may have heard someone say, "There are no good mutations." Creation Ministries International says that is not true, because some changes do give an advantage in some situations. They recommend saying it this way instead: we have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information in the way needed for microbes-to-man evolution, and even when a mutation helps, it almost always causes a loss of information.

Here is an example from Dr. Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International. On small, windy islands, some beetles have no wings. A beetle that can fly is more likely to get blown out to sea, so a beetle born without wings can actually survive better there. But notice what happened. The beetle didn't gain anything new. The "wing-making" information was broken or lost. It helped the beetle survive, but it went in the opposite direction from what evolution needs. You can't build a new machine by breaking parts off the old one.

What Natural Selection Can and Can't Do

Natural selection is real. Creatures that fit their surroundings better tend to survive and have more young. The Bible has no problem with that.

But Dr. Georgia Purdom of Answers in Genesis explains that natural selection only works with information that already exists. It sorts and removes. It does not write new information. In her words, it is "merely selecting information that already exists." A filter can take things out of a pile, but a filter can't add anything to the pile.

So when someone points to changes in beetles, or bacteria, or mice, and calls it evolution, we can kindly say: that's variety within kinds, sorting and losing information. It is not a fish turning into a philosopher.

What This Means for Us

The living world is preaching the same sermon as the stars. Job said it long ago:

"But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." — Job 12:7-10 (KJV)

Paul said that creation leaves every person without an excuse:

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" — Romans 1:20 (KJV)

And he warned what happens when people see God's handiwork and still turn away:

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." — Romans 1:21 (KJV)

You are not an accident. You did not make yourself.

"Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." — Psalm 100:3 (KJV)

The same Lord who wrote your body in His book also wrote the way of salvation in His Book. Every one of us has sinned and broken His law. But Jesus Christ, the Word who made all things, came down, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again. He can make you new inside, in a way no mutation ever could:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." — 2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." — Romans 10:9 (KJV)

A Simple Step for This Week

• Read Psalm 139 all the way through, slowly.
• Each morning, thank God for one part of your body by name: your eyes, your hands, your heart.
• If someone tells you that you came about by chance, ask them kindly: "Where does a written code come from?"

A Prayer

Lord, thank You for making me fearfully and wonderfully. Thank You that before I was born, You wrote me in Your book. Forgive me for the times I have not glorified You or been thankful. Help me to see Your hand in everything You have made, and to trust in Jesus Christ, my Creator and my Saviour. In Jesus' name, amen.

Lesson 4 coming soon.