“According to all that I show you, that is, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings, just so you shall make it,” Exodus 25:9 NKJV.
The tabernacle wasn’t a ramshackle affair. It wasn’t something made up as they went along, but every part of it, down to the clasps which held the sides to the frame, was set forth and described. There were no revisions, no “TabernaclePlan.02.” It was complete as it came from the mind of God to the hand of Moses.
That’s equally true of everything in creation. Many believe that this world came into being as the result of a chance event, but someone has calculated the odds of such a thing happening as 1 in 40 to the tenth power, or as 1 followed by 40 zeroes. That is a lot of zeroes: 1 chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. There probably isn’t even a name for such a number. It seems to me that it’s a lot easier to believe Genesis 1-3 than it is to believe in such a throwing of the dice, as it were. Of course, that does get rid of any idea of God and any obligation humanity might have to obey Him. We’re think we’re so smart, but all things considered in perspective, an amoeba may be smarter than us.
The truth is, God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, or order, cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33. While Paul primarily wrote to correct come serious problems in the Corinthian church, what he wrote is applicable in a lot of places. No matter where one looks, whether through a microscope or through a telescope, he sees order and design. Even in the so-called random movement of atoms, there is a discernible pattern.
This is also true of life. God has not left us on our own, as it were, but has given us instructions about pretty much every area of life. Whether individually, in our churches, in our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, or our nation, there are principles and practices either commanded or forbidden, the doing of which in either case will have discernible results. We do reap what we sow.
More than 60 years ago, a woman decided that we should ignore what God says, so she went to court. There were others, too, but she was the main catalyst. We see the results all around us today. Things once hidden behind closed doors are now promoted, protected and praised. I’m old enough to remember “back then,” what it was like before Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her atheist views permeated society. People left their front doors unlocked. Cars were left unlocked – we see this on some of the old TV programs. Women could walk down the street at night without being concerned for their safety. I’ve mentioned this before, but the high school I graduated from was in a “tough” neighborhood. This “tough” school had an ROTC rifle range in the basement, with rifles and live ammunition. I qualified as a marksman on that range. People today get all upset at the very idea of “guns,” but there was never any problem at that school. Young men carried rifles in a rack in the back window of their trucks. No one thought anything about it. Was there crime? Of course. At the same time, back then is not to be compared with today in the same century.
To paraphrase Hosea 8:7, “We have sowed the wind and have reaped the whirlwind.” Or, in the immortal words of Pogo, for you “old timers”: “We have found the enemy and they is us.” I don’t mean to minimize the problem or to make fun of it, or to imply that Walt Kelly, the author of Pogo, would agree with me. He probably wouldn’t. But he was right in this case, whether he would agree with how I’m taking it or not.
“We” are the enemy. Having decided that we’re too sophisticated for those old-fashioned “Puritan” ideas, we’ve thrown them all out in the name of “freedom”.
By doing that, and rejecting “order,” we’ve left the door wide open for “confusion”.