The World's Architect: Part 1

Allen Webster

Topic(s): Science

Jesus, the Carpenter, built the universe. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, made it inhabitable. God, the Architect, designed it.

Alexander Campbell distinguished the work of the members of the Godhead in the creation by saying the Father originates, the Son executes, and the Holy Spirit consummates.¹ H. Leo Boles wrote of the part each played in their cooperative projects:

If we are permitted to distinguish one part . . . in every work effected by the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in common, the power to bring forth proceeds from the Father, the power to arrange from the Son, the power to perfect from the Holy Spirit.²

There was a division of labor but a unity of purpose.

It is interesting to explore the part each played in the creation of both the material and the spiritual worlds.

The Father Was the Architect

The first task of a family planning to build a house is to decide upon the blueprints. Without plans, the carpenters, brick masons, roofers, carpet layers, painters, sheetrock hangers, electricians, plumbers, cabinetmakers, concrete finishers, and landscapers can’t even start. It all begins with the architect.

God is in the construction business. “For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God” (Hebrews 3:4). “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). But like many contractors, He did not do all the work Himself. In fact, His part seems to have centered in the early stages. When Paul said Abraham “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10), he used two interesting words. Matthew Henry says the latter phrase means that God “contrived the model” of the universe. That is, He designed it. Adam Clark expounded further on “builder and maker”:

The word τεχνιτης signifies an architect, one who plans, calculates, and constructs a building. The word δημιουργος signifies the governor of a people; one who forms them by institutions and laws; the framer of a political constitution. God is here represented the Maker or Father of all the heavenly inhabitants, and the planner of their citizenship in that heavenly country.³

Just as God designed the eternal city, He seems to have planned man’s temporary abode. He saw the creation in His omniscient mind before His omnipresent eye ever looked upon it. Jeremiah said, “He hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding” (Jeremiah 51:15).

What characterized God’s architecture?

Precision

God wants us to do things “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40), because that is how He does them. His universe operates under precise, invariable laws. Men have been able to decipher and catalogue many of them, such as gravity, the mutual attractiveness of bodies in space, and the speed of light. Werner Von Braun was America’s rocket genius and former director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He said, “The grandeur of the cosmos serves only to confirm my belief in the certainty of a Creator. I just can’t envision this whole universe coming into being without something like a divine will.” What convinced him of this?

The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we have no difficulty building a spaceship to fly to the moon and can time the flight with the precision of a fraction of a second. These laws must have been set by Somebody.⁴

The principal library in New York City contains a tabulation of every eclipse of the sun during the last 2,500 years. It gives the exact duration in minutes and seconds of each of them, and discloses the part of the earth where the eclipse could have been visible.⁵ The fascinating design speaks eloquently of a Designer.

Purpose

Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson⁶ wrote, “Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned.” Contrary to such evolutionary dogma, the earth and man’s existence on it is not simply blind, purposeless chance.

A characteristic of God’s work is economy of energy. He does not waste resources in useless activity. The physical creation, therefore, must have been purposeful. “He created it not in vain” (Isaiah 45:18). He had a purpose, and He told us what it was. We know why we are here.

It is simple: “The Lord hath made all things for himself” (Proverbs 16:4). Paul said a lot on the subject in a few words: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Romans 11:36). We are here simply for Him—to show forth His praises (1 Peter 2:9).

God created the universe for His own pleasure (Revelation 4:11). This implies two great truths:

God can be pleased. We may have had fathers or employers who could never be pleased, no matter how hard we tried. Our heavenly Father is not like that—we can please Him (Colossians 1:10; 3:20; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 John 3:22).

Endnotes:

¹ Christian Baptism. Book V. Chapter III. http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/cbac/CBAC503.HTM.

² The Holy Spirit.

³ Builder (technitēs). Old word from technē (craft) or trade (Acts 17:29; 18:3), craftsman, artificer, in N.T. only here and Acts 19:24, 38; Maker (dēmiourgos). Old word from dēmios (public) and ergon, a worker for the public, artisan, framer, here only in N.T. (Robertson’s Word Pictures).

⁴ http://www.watchtower.org/e/pr/article_02.htm.

⁵ Coffman, James Burton. Commentary.

⁶ Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century. Among other things, he is notable for anticipating such concepts as punctuated equilibrium. He was Professor of zoology at Columbia University and curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959. He was curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University from 1959 to 1970.