Prabhupada, May 17, 1975, Perth: Just like big, big cloud containing millions of tons of water floating in the air. How it is being done? Eh? Millions of tons of water are floating in the air. That we see daily. So similarly, all these planets are floating by God’s arrangement. Not only floating. Making center that polestar, all the planets are moving around it, even the sun. So it is by God’s arrangement.
Joe Crews, Amazingfacts.org: “Watering the Earth — God’s Miracle”
Now let’s see how intelligence and design came into the ratio of land and water. One-quarter of the earth’s surface is dry land, and three-quarters is covered with water. In the United States alone we have three and three-quarter million square miles of dry land, and all of it has to be watered and cared for. In fact, if it weren’t watered, there would be no vegetation and no growing grass or trees.
Just imagine for a moment that the ratio of land and water was changed from what it is at present. The proportion of water and land determines the rainfall on the earth. Suppose the ocean was only half its present size. That would mean our rainfall would only be one-quarter of what we now receive. What would that mean for the three and three-quarter million square miles of land we have in these United States? All of it would be turned into a vast, dry desert! But on the other hand, if half the present land were added to the ocean, there would be four times as much rainfall as there is now, and the entire United States would be turned into a vast marshland where human life would be almost impossible. Now suppose that mankind had to water this entire three and three-quarter million square miles of land. How could we ever spread out that water and irrigate the land effectively? What a tremendous task that would be! “There’s plenty of water in the ocean,” someone might observe, “we could simply use it to water the dry land.” Although it may sound reasonable, there are three problems connected with it. First, transportation. We’d have to get the water out of the ocean and spread it evenly over the land. The second problem is the salt it contains, which would kill all the green plants. The third problem is weight. Water is 800 times the weight of the atmosphere, presenting the challenge of how to transport and disperse it.
God Solves the Weight Problem
How has God solved the weight problem? First, He uses heat. We know heat expands things and cold contracts them, and that water is the material most subject to expansion. In fact, when turned into steam, it becomes 1,600 to 1,700 times its original volume. Remember, though, this water is 800 times heavier than the atmosphere. But God simply sends down the warming rays of the sun, turning the water into a vapor that is 900 times lighter than water. Now it is one-eighth times lighter than the atmosphere. So this vapor is easily lifted up out of the ocean, carried into the sky—perhaps miles into the air—and formed into great cloud masses.
The second problem is deadly salt, but God simply evaporates the water and leaves all the mineral deposits and impurities behind. Taken up into the clouds, the water is sweet and soft, perfectly adapted to irrigate the earth.
No Sprinkler System Like This
What about the third problem—transportation? The water that is lifted up is still hanging over the ocean, which doesn’t need any more water. God sends along winds to blow the clouds and spread them out over the dry land area where it is needed. But how to get all the water down out of the clouds? Here is another wonderful miracle. Cold will contract, of course, so when the clouds pass over the mountain peaks, the cold air reaches up and begins to cool those clouds, turning the vapor into a condensation of moisture.
Now consider what would happen if the clouds gave up all the water they contain at one time—it would flood the entire surface of the earth with three feet of water! Therefore, the cooling process must be gradual. For example, if the temperature of the cloud is lowered by 9 degrees, it will drop half its water! So God arranges for a gradual cooling process to let the rain come down in gentle to vigorous showers to provide the amounts needed to revive the earth. What an incredible process! Of course, some of it rains back into the ocean, but it is needed there to provide the necessary amount of oxygen for fish living in salty ocean beds.
Did you know that these great facts of nature were all known and understood long before the scientists and naturalists discovered them? Ecclesiastes 1:7 is a most interesting verse. “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.” Why not? The text continues to give the answer. “Unto the place from whence the river comes, thither they return again.”
The Bible says the reason the seas do not overflow is that the water is taken up again and returned to where the rivers come from. And so there is a constant movement of water going up from the ocean in vapor form, carried as clouds over the land, and brought down again as rain, which forms rivulets that find their way back to the sea. Even though the great naturalists felt they had made a new discovery when they found out about the cycles of clouds, they could have known it all by reading the Scriptures.
Why Clouds Don’t Break
Another text with scientific information is Job 26:8. “He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.” This is a beautiful text, explaining that the clouds don’t break and spill all their water at once, even though millions of tons of water are drawn up from the oceans into the clouds. And, of course, Job was correct. We’ve just found that God has a process of gradual cooling that releases the water little by little as it is needed to irrigate the surface of the earth. God revealed it to Job long before mankind figured it out.
I’m sure all of us know that water has weight, and that its pressure increases dramatically as the depth increases. Certain fish that exist in the very bottom of the ocean are especially engineered by God to withstand this tremendous pressure. If brought quickly up to the surface, they practically explode. The pressure that God put into their muscular structure is still there on the inside when they are brought up where the pressure is not exerted from the outside.
This is a wonderful fact, but do you realize that we, too, live in the bottom of an atmospheric sea, which also has tremendous weight? At sea level we are living down at the bottom of a very heavy, dense covering. As the ocean is to the fish, so the atmosphere is to us. Every moment we live, a pressure of 14 pounds per square inch is exerted upon our body structure, and that’s pretty heavy. We think a man is strong if he can carry 200 pounds on his back. In fact, the strongest man that ever lived put only 415 pounds over his head. Yet, every single form of life in this world, whether it’s a 90-pound woman or a burly man, has a constant pressure of over 15 tons at sea level pushing and pressing upon them from every direction. That’s 30,000 pounds! Even the filmy, gauzy insects have been designed by God to withstand their proportion of this pressure. That little gnat, so light and frail that it seems anything could crush it, is built by God to withstand the weight of the atmosphere. Can you think this happened by mere chance? Consider Job 28:25. “To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.” The Bible says the wind has weight.
The air, in other words, is heavy. The atmosphere has weight. If you climb a mountain, the higher you climb, the thinner the atmosphere becomes, and you feel distressed and uncomfortable. Why? Because the pressure is not as great. You see, God has built in a certain amount of pressure that balances that on the outside at sea level. If you went high enough, you would be just as stressed as the fish brought up from the ocean depths. How wonderful that God has designed each living creature to be perfectly comfortable in its own environment.
Lucky Accident or Design?
Now consider another, even greater, miracle. The atmosphere around us is made up of two main ingredients—nitrogen and oxygen—whose mixture is always the same, whether at the highest mountaintops or in the deepest caves. The perfect balance is 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. You might ask, “Why is it this way?” Is there some particular reason for it? Is it important that we have this exact mixture of nitrogen and oxygen?” Yes, I can assure you it is most important. If the nitrogen were increased, our life processes would slow down and we would die. If the oxygenwere measurably increased, our life processes would be rapidly increased. Our pulse rate would just run away and soon we would wear out and die. But God made it just right.
Suppose, for example, it was two-thirds nitrogen and one-third oxygen. If that proportion prevailed, and an electrical reaction caused the elements to combine, do you realize that the whole world would be turned into laughing maniacs? Everybody would be laughing because that would produce the laughing gas, N2O, the same kind dentists sometimes use when extracting teeth. Or suppose it was divided half and half. That would produce nitric oxide, which is quickly fatal to all forms of life.
Was it just a lucky accident that it came out like this? Did some blind happenstance of nature produce this exact mixture that is necessary for life support? Or was there an intelligent design? This world would become chaotic if this atmospheric mixture slipped out of control for just a single instant. We would see one of the most tremendous of all explosions, because nitrogen is the basic component of gunpowder; and oxygen, of course, makes for rapid combustion. It would be “Goodbye, world!”
And yet some day, apparently, there is going to an explosion like this. Some day the elements are going to melt with fervent heat, the Bible says. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:10 that “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” I don’t know how God will arrange that, but I do know that some great fire one of these days is going to burn, and the earth will be purified by this strange fire of God. And the elements will be involved in it because the elements are going to melt. Maybe God is going to change just very, very slightly the present proportion of nitrogen and oxygen, causing this great conflagration to take place. I do know this—we must be ready for that day when it comes. The Bible indicates it is near at hand.
Another of the mysteries of nature was described in the Bible long before it was investigated by science. We read about it in Job 38:8–11. “Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?”
What beautiful, poetic language we find here to describe the creation of the ocean. It speaks of it as being born and coming forth from the womb. God says that the cloud was the garment of it and a thick darkness was a swaddling band placed around the ocean at its birth. But then God added, “Here ye may come but no further; here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”
The scientists of this world have been amazed in learning the secrets of the tidal actions. They still don’t understand all the deep, underwater cataclysmic actions that affect the tides and wave patterns. No naturalist on the face of the earth has figured out all the secrets of these swift tidal waves as they move to and fro in their own mysterious ways.
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