No New Thing

Psalms, chapter 25, verses 12-14:

12 What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.

13 His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth.

14 The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.

Isaiah, chapter 66, verses 1-2:

1 Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?

2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.

Let us be that people. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID in Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verses 9-10:

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

MAN SAID:  I am wise. I have no Creator. I have achieved great wisdom. I am accomplished. I have discovered great science. Man created gods to qualm evolutionary fears. Look at the marvels of all our inventions that we have produced without any input from God.

Now THE RECORD. Skeptical men laugh at the concept of "no new thing" and point to this passage as just another proof of the fallibility of the Bible. A closer look will tell another story. Aviation is one "contradiction" to which they point. I assume the critics never considered the bird or the dragonfly or the honeybee, or other flying creature. Man learned flight by studying the bird—its wing design, its bone structure, its principles of lift—and attempted to copy its science. Those who marvel at the Harrier ‘Jump Jet’—truly a modern engineering wonder—should consider the hummingbird—which, by the way, makes new hummingbirds all the time, without the engineering and construction skills of man.

Does jet propulsion qualify as something new? Not quite. Consider the seagoing creatures such as the squid or the jellyfish that propel themselves through water by the process of jet propulsion.

Space travel then, must be a new thing under the sun that would qualify as a contradiction of the Word of God. Unfortunately for the skeptics, the answer again is no. God’s science of space travel, as you should expect, far exceeds the efforts of man, as the following passages will reveal:

Acts, chapter 1, verses 9-11:

9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;

11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

And then I Thessalonians, chapter 4, verses 14-18:

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

And also Judges, chapter 13, verses 19-20:

19 So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD: and the angel did wonderously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.

20 For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground.

How’s that for space travel?

A hot topic of scientific discussion is DNA and the genome. This isn’t something new but actually something very old that man is just beginning to understand—still nothing new under the sun.

Those who are enthralled with the new science of cloning need only to go back about 6,000 years and review the Genesis record of Adam’s rib to see some similarities. Genesis, chapter 2, verses 21-23:

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

The computer industry is new to man, but certainly not new to God who created the most marvelous computer of all, which is the brain between our ears—the most underdeveloped resource in the universe, without a modicum of exaggeration. On this website, in the "GodSaidManSaid: The Record" category, is a feature article titled "The Superhuman Brain," from which the following idea is found:

Imagine: your brain weighs only three pounds. Yet, a computer with the same number of "bits" would fill a building 100 stories tall that would cover the state of Texas. [End of quote]

Whether or not that calculation is still accurate would require a review of the original data. But I do wonder whether anyone has ever considered that in addition to all the brain’s other functions, between your ears dwells a pharmaceutical plant producing medicines on an at-need basis that sustain and heal the body. No new thing.

The dental and the naval industry are both awaiting with anticipation the development of a "new" product that would act as a glue or an anti-glue. This new bonding agent would work marvelously under water or in wet areas such as the mouth and bones. As an anti-glue, this product could be applied to teeth to stop dental plaque build-up or to the hull of a ship to prevent "biofoulers" such as barnacles from becoming attached. In medicine, it could be an anti-glue that, when applied as a coating to heart stints for instance, could keep the stints from clotting or becoming coated with residues.

This new product under development is actually, as you should have guessed, not new at all but an attempt to copy the humble seagoing creature called the mussel. The mussel, with the glue it produces, tethers itself underwater to intertidal rock and resists forces up to 1,000 pounds per square inch. The research team studying the mussels believes they will develop a mussel glue-like product that will nearly equal the real thing. Again, no new thing.

The military organization called DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency released $50,000,000 in the spring of 2001 to various organizations to develop a legs-only exoskeleton for trials by 2003 and a whole-body exoskeleton by 2005. The following excerpt is from the article titled "Really Special Forces," in the February 2002 issue of Discover magazine. It reads:

Wearing a device built to DARPA specs, a grunt, without grunting, could heft 400 pounds, including bigger weapons, bulletproof armor, better communications devices, and more food, and remain continuously active for at least four hours. Exoskeletons could be optimized for other combat tasks, too, such as running much faster than ordinary humans, jumping over fences, or picking up rubble during rescue efforts. Add a soupcon of artificial intelligence and the suit could save its wearer if he is wounded. "You could send a command to take this guy home," says Stephen Jacobsen, CEO of Sarcos. [End of quote]

Of course this is not new: simply consider the human body. This is obvious in the following quote from Jacobsen concerning the challenge of developing the exoskeleton, "Muscle is so [darn] good at this stuff. If you took all of the muscles off of a healthy adult male and put them in full contraction, they would lift 20 tons. And they run on carrots." They acknowledge that the secret to success is to find a way to duplicate the efficiency of muscle tissue. God said, "No new thing."

Carver Mead, referred to as "the most important practical scientist of the late 20th century" by George Gilder, who is one of the foremost leaders of high technology, is about to turn the digital photography industry on its ear. His brain child begins with a sensor called the X3 which produces images as good or better than film, something the digital industry has failed to achieve. Some claim it will be the greatest advancement in imaging in nearly 70 years. Take a look on how this great innovation was discovered. This following excerpt is from an article written by science writer Eric Levin, titled, "The Next Photography Revolution:"

In the 1980s, Mead turned his attention to an even more complex and ingenious kind of circuitry: the human nervous system. It is clearly the most successful computing system of all time, and it is an analog, rather than a digital system. That part intrigued Mead the most. Instead of registering information in digital strings of ones and zeroes, an analog system, such as a retina or an ear, measures a continuum of values. Digital systems in the technological world were quick and complex; analog systems were slow and simple. Mead thought he could learn a lot by studying—and attempting to model in silicon—the natural masterpieces of human analog design. This was such a new field, it had no name. So he gave it one: neuromorphic electronics. And it grew into businesses. His study of the cochlea was instrumental in the founding of Sonic Innovations, a digital hearing aid company. Synaptics, which he founded in 1986, created the laptop TouchPad. Foveon was spun off from Synaptics and National Semiconductor, a chip manufacturer, to pursue the ideal of a digital image sensor that would see in full color, like the human eye.

Mead’s chief scientist Dick Lyon is a major player in this "new" technology. In the same article just quoted was found this telling statement:

Lyon believed he could find a way to use the soft color separation in silicon advantageously. The reason he thought so, as he reminded the others, is that "the eye itself does it that way. The color sensitivities of the cones in the retina are not sharply defined. On a graph, they would look like smooth overlapping curves." [End of quotes]

Nothing new under the sun.

Man is not in the creation business. He attempts to copy that which God has already engineered and created and God’s works are wonderous to behold. Psalms, chapter 19, verses 1-3:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

2 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

GOD SAID in Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verses 9-10:

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

MAN SAID: I am wise. I have no Creator. I have achieved great wisdom. I am accomplished. I have discovered great science. Man created gods to qualm evolutionary fears. Look at all the marvels of our inventions that we have produced without any input from God.

Now you have the record.



References:

King James Bible

Burdick, A., "Cement On The Half Shell," Discover, February 2003

Lemley, B., "Really Special Forces," Discover, February 2002, p 25

Levin, E., "The Next Photography Revolution," Discover, December 2002, pp 58,60

• Go Further With Christ
• Email To a Friend
• Comments or Questions?