Overview
Rev. Tom Knupp considers the extraordinary design, behavior, migration, navigation, and biblical imagery of birds. Drawing from Genesis, Job, the Psalms, the Gospels, and other records, he presents the bird kingdom as a vivid witness to God’s wisdom, personal care, provision, protection, and promised victory.
Transcript
Birds as a Personal Witness of Creation
Well, I heard from a few campers that they were getting woken, waken, I have a math degree, not English, I apologize, that they were getting awakened by birds in the morning, right? Well, our next exciting teacher is going to expound on the witness of the birds. Please welcome back Reverend Tom Nutt. Well, I can see that you are all in rare form this morning.
You've migrated. Thank you very much. And, you know, the birds migrate not because they're cold, because their metabolisms are so high, they're generating all this energy.
They could live in the cold. They migrate because their food is gone. The insects have died.
If they're insect eaters, then they go where the insects are, and then they come back when the insects come back. If they're seed eaters, they can stick around, or if they eat nuts or fruits or whatever. So that's an interesting aside.
And speaking of food, by the way, you normally think about the birds eating the insects. Did you know, if you have a hummingbird feeder, if you ever see a praying mantis on or around the feeder, get rid of him if you like your hummers, because it's been documented praying mantises have ambushed hummingbirds on the feeders and eaten them. I don't know why God did that, but hey, it's part of the deal, I guess.
So, well, The Witness of the Birds. Thank you, Ted, for the opportunity to share this second time. My original assignment here was to teach on The Witness of the Stars, and I was looking at the roster of topics, and I said, Ted, where are the birds? You got any of the birds? He said, well, do you want to do it? I said, sure, I'll do it.
Ed was talking about DNA, and we're all different. And in my family, for instance, I was the only person in my family that was interested in the birds growing up. And now I have a family of my own, and I'm still the only person that is interested in the birds.
It all started when I was eight years old, and so it's been a lifelong passion for me. And I actually started a list when I was eight years old of all the birds that I had identified personally. And here it is over five decades later, and I still am maintaining that list.
So right now, I am a dozen shy of 500 species worldwide. So maybe I'll gain a few here in Montana. First time to Montana.
But some of my favorites that I have seen over the years, I've seen lily trotters that walk on lily pads in Costa Rica. In Kenya, I've seen hoopoes, the ones that have the crest up top like that. They're really neat.
In Dubai, I've seen a trained falcon and had it on my hand, and it's trained to hunt for men. Not hunt men, but hunt for men, just so you get that. And then in India, I've seen wild peacocks.
And we'll be concluding the teaching today on another favorite that I've seen, which is sea eagles in Hong Kong. So the list keeps growing as I keep going to new places like Montana, and it's always fun to find out what God has in the next new environment that you get to experience and explore. So that's why I'm here again.
But because we each have that individual DNA and because God knows what you like and what you love, God can work with that. And because of who Tom is, and Tom is an avid birder, many times if God wants to delight, instruct, or simply reach me, many times he just might use a bird because he knows that wherever Tom goes, he's always looking for the birds. And it drives Marilyn crazy because we'll be driving down the highway, I'm driving, and a hawk will fly over, and I'm looking out the window, what hawk is it? But he knows he can get my attention.
But God works with us so very personally, and there are things in your life where God can get to you just because of preferences that are meaningful to you. And he knows that, and he works with you just like he works with all of his creatures. So in Genesis 1-2, the very first scripture in the Bible with a figure of speech describing God, describes God in characteristics of bird behavior.
In Genesis 1-2, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Moved upon in the original translation means to brood, or to hover, or to incubate. Now the rabbis, when they would teach the children this verse, would say, and the Spirit of God moved like a dove upon the face of the waters.
Why did they do that? Well, illustrating for children that this is bird behavior. Hovering, brooding, incubating. And that's how you teach children in the children's fellowships.
Reverend Ladwig, at the close of his teaching, shared from Job a great scripture there in Job 12 about how we can learn from God's creatures different lessons. I want to read another such verse from Job. It's in Job 35.
Job 35 verse 11, who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven. So same message. God wants us to learn about him as we observe the witness of his creation.
Birds in Genesis and Humanity’s Stewardship
And I want to say something about this word fowls in the Bible. When we read fowl, we immediately think poultry. You're talking chicken, turkey, ducks, right? But that's King James for bird.
So anytime you see fowl, consider the fowls of the air that neither reap nor sow. That's the birds of the air. So you can apply that each time we get to a scripture like that.
We're going to go back to Genesis 1, and we'll be in Genesis for a little while here. In Genesis 1, what was one of the first things that God wanted the birds to do? In Genesis 1 21, and God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every waned bird after his kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply in the earth. So just like the insects, they were to proliferate. And in addition to that, God set up a relationship between man and the birds.
In Genesis 1 26, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So there are wild animals and there are tame animals. And some birds are more readily trained than others.
But God set it up this way so that there would be a mutually beneficial relationship. And one of the responsibilities that God gave to man with the birds was to name them. In Genesis 2 20, it says, verse 20 says, and Adam gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and every beast of the field.
Now, the way that the ornithologists, an ornithologist is a scientist who studies birds, when they find a new species, they name it after themselves. So, you know, you got Kirtland's warbler or Buick's Wren or whatever. Now, if Adam had done that, it would have been a real problem because all the bird species, right? This is Adam's bird number one, Adam's bird number two, Adam's bird number three.
That's not going to work, right? Well, I was astonished. I just learned, I didn't know this, but that in the Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic, the names of the birds, like in the Bible where they're identified, are done via onomatopoeia. I don't know if you ever studied what onomatopoeia is, but basically it's when something is named according to the way it sounds.
So, that made it simple because he'd listen to the bird call and say, oh, that sounds like this sound, and it's not an exact reproduction, but it's something that he could remember because he was the one that invented it, right? So, we have a recording here of the turtle dove that occurs in Israel, and I want you to listen to the call of the turtle dove, and it's called turtle because it says tur, tur, tur, tur. So, go ahead, Steven. Wait a minute.
We're not there yet. It's coming. Tur, tur, tur, tur, tur.
That's why it's turtle dove. It has nothing to do with turtles. It's because it's saying tur, tur, tur, tur, tur, and the name of it in Hebrew is tur.
So, that's how he named the birds, and isn't that a fantastic thing when you think about it, that he named them according to their true nature, and that made them easy to identify because that's the way they were. They were true to the way they were. We talked a little about domestication, that they're wild birds and tame birds.
Homing, Provision, and Biblical Bird Imagery
One of the great relationships between men and birds is with the homing pigeon or the carrier pigeon where basically a pigeon wants to go back home to where it hatched, and men can train them so that by taking them farther and farther away from where they hatched and then letting them loose and then they find their way back home, they go farther and farther. Eventually, they might go 100 miles away, and the pigeon or the dove learns how to come back home, and then they can strap a message to the leg of the bird, and it becomes a carrier pigeon. So, like in World War I, carrier pigeons were used to take messages behind enemy lines, and sometimes the birds would sustain severe injuries, but they had such a homing instinct that they would get all the way to them, and the message would save the day in the battle.
So, these are relationships that God made possible, and then man was able to utilize. What about in the flood, Genesis 8? The first actual species of bird that is mentioned in the Bible or kind of bird, specific bird, is in Genesis 8, verse 7. So, the ark had come to rest, and Noah needed to find out if there was any place where they could go where there was dry land. Verse 6 says, it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent forth a raven.
That's the first bird mentioned, which went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Why did he send a raven? It was really a stellar choice, because ravens are bold. They are undaunted, like if there's a gale coming, they love flying into the force of the wind.
It doesn't bother them a bit. They're able to fly for long periods without rest. They're designed to soar, and they travel long distances.
They have very keen eyesight. They're able to see for miles around. They eat almost anything, including carrion.
Well, in a flooded world, what was out there to eat? Just floating dead things. So, raven had something to eat while it was on its mission, and they're noisy, and they have an easily recognized voice. I've been out on the open ocean off Cape Hatteras, where there's no sight of land.
You look everywhere. It's hard to see anything, because it's just such a vast expanse out there, but then if you could hear the raven coming, oh, here he's coming back over here. So, that was the first one he sent out, and then it says in verse 8, also he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground.
But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand and took her and pulled her in unto him into the ark. The raven didn't do that.
The raven just went back and forth. There was more of a relationship of a domestication relationship with the dove, and basically, when we talk about doves and pigeons, it's one family of birds. The dove is like the smaller version, and the pigeon is like the larger version.
And he stayed yet other seven days, verse 10, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came into him in the evening, and low in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off, so no one knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days and sent forth the dove, which returned not again unto him anymore.
So characteristics of the dove, the relationship with the master. Doves don't eat carrion. Doves eat products of the earth.
So they eat seeds, they eat fruits, nuts, like the things that they had in abundance in the promised land. What did they have? They had wheat, barley, pomegranates, figs, dates, olives. Doves like to nest in the olive groves.
They eat all those things. So if there was going to be that kind of an environment, the water really must have gone down if there was going to be a low olive grove and all these seeds and fruits. Doves are also venturesome.
They're long-distance migrants, so could handle that. They're sure of their way, they're sure of their way back home, and they're swift to act and accomplish their mission. Wonderful choices for the first two birds to help man in the situation of the flood.
Now after the flood, Noah wanted to recognize God, and God had him build an altar in Genesis 8-20. And Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Something about doves to know, and it's really amazing, is that a dove is a willing sacrifice.
So when you take a dove, and you're going to offer it and sacrifice to God, and you plunge the knife in its chest, it does not struggle. It just lies quietly, and it allows itself to be the sacrifice. So the clean birds, like the dove is a clean bird in the Old Testament, the raven is actually among the unclean.
God actually separated and said certain of them were unclean in the Old Testament. Genesis 9 verse 2 mentions that after the flood, man could eat the birds. And the fear of you, verse 2 of Genesis 9, and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are they delivered.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be food or meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. So the animate creatures, including clean birds, were to be food for man after the flood. And that was necessary when they went into the wilderness after the exodus.
Migration, Flight, and the Wisdom of Design
Let's go to Numbers 11. Numbers 11, they had crossed the Red Sea, but now they were wandering in the wilderness and they needed food. And in Numbers 11, 31, and there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails from the sea.
Quails are like partridges or chickens. They're what we would call poultry. You can shoot quail and eat them.
They're a lot smaller than a chicken. But he brought quails from the sea. Why were the quails in the sea? The quails were migrating.
They were on their way from Cyprus down to Sinai. It's a long journey for them. Sometimes if they get off course in a wind, they're flying against the wind.
They're not strong flyers like the raven or the dove. And so if there's a weather event and they can't handle it, they might land exhausted and be easy for you to just go and collect. Sometimes they actually fall from the sky and perish because they're just totally wiped.
And that's what happened here. The Lord and brought quails from the sea and let them fall by the camp as it were a day's journey on this side and as it were a day's journey on the other side round about the camp and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. There were so many of them you had to walk through them all.
They were just everywhere on the ground. And the people stood up all that day and all that night and all the next day and they gathered the quails. So they had more than enough food and quail is really tasty.
So God provided for all that. The one thing that God told man about the birds, just like the other creatures, there was a prohibition against worshiping them because they were there for godly purposes, not for purposes of adoration. Let's talk about some of the figures of speech.
We looked at this before with some of the other creatures, but let's look at figures of speech where God tells us about the birds. Let's go to Exodus 19 and this is the first mention of the eagle, which by the way is the bird that is most frequently mentioned in the Bible. Exodus 19 verse 4. You've seen what I did unto the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself.
How many of you have ever seen a bird with another bird on its wing flying around? You have? No, I'm talking about actually here's the wing and something resting on the wing. Has anybody ever seen that? I don't think so because we learned even our bones are hollow, but birds bones are hollow and birds weigh almost nothing. That's part of the aerodynamic thing.
They can't bear anything on their wing when they're flying. So what is this talking about? I bear you on eagle's wings. Well, some of you may know about thermals.
Thermals are air currents. So right now that the sun is heating up the air out here, that heat from the earth has to go somewhere and God has these air currents called thermals and the way they work is the air doesn't go straight up. The earth actually spirals up and when it spirals up it gets to a cloud like a cumulus cloud at the top of the column of air and only then will there be a downdraft of cool air on the other side of the cloud, but the warm air is rising through that spiral up to the cloud.
Well, the birds of prey like vultures or hawks or even the raven and the eagle will basically go into that column of air. They'll find where the thermal starts. They'll start low and they can't go straight up because the thermal doesn't go straight up.
The thermal goes around in a spiral. So they just follow the spiral and what they do is they hold their wings out and they are born on eagle's wings. Well, what is doing the bearing of the eagle's wings? The wind beneath their wings is God, right? It's God's elevator.
So if the eagle were trying to do it on its own, they could say, oh, I want to go up there and hunt from there. Okay, here I am on the ground. Flap, flap, flap.
That's not going to work too well, but you get on that free ride and it takes you all the way up. All you have to do is let go and let God. I bear you on eagle's wings.
What about Psalm 18? Some of these are in Psalms. So we'll go to Psalm 18. Let's see here.
The wings of the wind is another phrase referring to birds and winged creatures. In Psalm 18, talking about God rescuing his people, it says in Psalm 18 6, in my distress I called upon the Lord and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his temple and my cry came before him even into his ears.
So it's setting this up here. God sees his man. His man needs to be rescued.
He needs to get to him quickly. So then it says in verse 10, and he rode upon a cherub and did fly. Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.
Well, before supersonic jet transport, what was the fastest thing that a man could see? Well, the fastest living creature to this day in the world is the peregrine falcon. And the peregrine falcon, when it's plummeting after its prey, can go at speeds up to 200 miles an hour. We lived in the District of Columbia area and I was down on Thomas Circle, just a few blocks north of the White House.
And I'd gone down there to see this church with a very tall spire. Not because I was going to church, but because I wanted to see a peregrine falcon in action. And it had been reported that there were two peregrines up there way up on the steeple and they just loved the pigeon meat down there on the circle.
So I was watching. I could see where the peregrines were up there on the spire and I just wanted to watch this kill. Well, I really couldn't watch it because it was too fast for me to see, 200 miles an hour.
So there they were. I saw they took off and so I thought, okay, I'm going to try to find them with my binoculars. And all I saw was, poof, all these feathers everywhere.
I didn't see nothing. It was that fast. That's the wings of the wind.
That's how fast God goes to rescue us. That's how much he loves us. Psalm 17.
Wow. Keep me as the apple of thy eye. Hide me under the shadow of thy wings.
That's great too. You've seen pictures of swans on Swan Lake and then they have those very high wings and the wings sort of form like a little shelter. And then the baby swans crawl up their back.
They're called cygnets. And then they go and they're protected on the back. That's how God cares for us.
What about Psalm 91? Psalm 91 talks about wings and feathers as protection too. Psalm 91 verse 4 says, he shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Birds That Respond to God’s Direction
Clearly again, a reference to the birds. And here's one that I really love. This is in 1 Kings 19.
I just learned this. 1 Kings 19. This is a section of scripture where we learn how to recognize the voice of God when God is trying to reach us.
And it says in 1 Kings 19.11, Elijah is there with the Lord and he said, go forth and stand upon the mountain before the Lord. This is what the Lord tells him to do. So Elijah is standing there and behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains.
We heard a great song about this one yesterday. I sure love that. And break in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire and the Lord was not the fire. After the fire, Stephen play it.
A still small voice, soft whisper. Listen, you'll recognize it. We heard it already.
It's the voice of the dove. This is what the rabbis would teach them. They'd say a still small voice like a dove.
What's the dove saying? Too, too, too, too, too, too, too, too. You just learned that and you already know it, right? That's the voice of God. You hear the voice.
It's a soft voice and you hear it and at once you know it because it's too, too, too. Oh, I know exactly what that is. That's the turtle dove.
That's the still small voice. And that's why God works with you so personally. He knows what you are going to be listening to most attentively.
He knows how to get your attention and he'll get your attention differently than he gets my attention. But the point is that when he gets your attention, you know that it's his voice. It's a soft voice, but you know it's his voice and not anyone else's.
Jeremiah 8, we talked about migration here at the start. Jeremiah 8 and this is talking about how the birds know where to go and how to get there. Jeremiah 8 verse 7 says, yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, the cycle of migration, and the turtle, it's not talking about a tortoise, it's talking about the turtle dove, and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.
They come to Israel when it's time for them to come to Israel. But my people know not the judgment of the Lord. See, the birds know where to go and when to be there.
Why doesn't man know? I loved a National Geographic video I saw on a shearwater, which is an ocean bird that's out on the open ocean 24-7, 365 days a year, except when they come in to nest. And so they went and they dug up a fledgling from an earthen cliff in Ireland. And this fledgling had just gotten large enough to fly.
And so they put it in a bag and they hopped on a plane to Boston. They got to Boston and they released the fledgling shearwater in Boston. Now before they did this, they banded it.
So when you band a bird, you put a ring around its legs with a number so that it can be identified. That's the same one that we collected over here at this day and time. So they banded it, released it in Boston.
Three days later, it was found back in its burrow in Ireland. How did it do that? How did it do that? God equipped it to do that so that it could get back home. God has equipped you so that you can go places that you've never been before and you can get back home with God.
It's fantastic. He can take you right back just like the birds can do it. Well, you know what? You can do it too because of your body soul? No, because of the Spirit of God in you.
That's what allows you to have that homing instinct and get to be exactly where you need to be, exactly when you need to be there. Just like the shear water, we can do that. And they can do it because God put those lights in the heaven for signs and seasons.
The sun's up there, the moon's there, the stars. The birds register that and they know where they are. Then let's go back to 1 Kings and see another one with Elijah where Elijah needed food.
Children of Israel got the quails. This time it's something different where the birds are actually delivering the food. So 1 Kings 17 says in verse 1, Now this is again in line with the characteristics of the raven because ravens love to feed their young and make many journeys back and forth to feed them.
And they like to store extra food for later use so they can go back and get it. And to transport it, God has given them an extensible throat so they can hold that extra food in the crop of their throat. And they also like to tear meat into chunks so that it's easy to swallow.
So the ravens brought, it was perfectly sliced and diced, ready for consumption. Here's your pizza hut raven, delivery bird. And look at this, how God was able to reach these birds and tell them what to do, that he has signals for the birds and the birds will listen to him and do what he wants them to do.
And of course God takes care of the birds like we saw in the last hour, just like he takes care of the insects and gives them the food they need. Let's go now to the New Testament. We'll look at Matthew chapter 10.
Now we're going to talk more about the dove in the New Testament. And there are characteristics of doves. This verse is one I'm sure you've heard before.
Navigation, Renewal, and Mounting Up
In Matthew 10 verse 16, it says, Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless, which is gentle, pure, lowly, innocent as doves. And the dove was the creature that God used to represent the Spirit descending upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Matthew 3 verse 16, And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. So the Holy Spirit is like a dove, symbolizing God's love, his forgiveness, his peace.
Remember the olive branch in the dove's mouth when it came back to Noah on the ark. Here are some pertinent characteristics of pigeons and doves that help us to understand why the dove was used here to represent the Holy Spirit. Doves are faithful, meaning they're monogamous.
They have a partner for life. Doves are cooperative, so in raising the young, both sexes incubate and help to feed the young. Doves are communal, so they're not loners.
They're not free-range chickens. They are communal. They are aware.
They navigate by the sun's position. They navigate by the earth's magnetic field. They are able to perceive odors of, this is what it smelled like in the area that I hatched, and so I know I'm back.
They can perceive sounds. They can perceive light. All these things help them to get back home.
Well, God has equipped us so that we can be aware, and we can go new places, and we can get back home when we need to, and God will be there to give us all the signs that we need. Then, not talking about signs, miracles, and wonders, but just indicators along the way helping us with the path. Then, the pigeons and doves are loyal.
We talked about their homing instinct, that they're strongly attached to home, always endeavoring to come back, and they're intrepid like those ones in World War I that sustained injuries when they were trying to get the messages back behind enemy lines. Well, let's also talk about Acts chapter 10 and things that changed from the Old Testament to the New. In the Old Testament, there was a whole list of unclean birds.
God said, don't eat these. You can eat the other ones, and so here in Acts 10, verse 12, things had changed, and God needed to get through to Peter so that Peter would understand that salvation was not just for the Jews anymore. It was also for the Gentiles, and the way he did this was a vision of creatures, and so Peter saw this sheet let down from the four corners to the earth, and it says in verse 12, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and birds of the air.
And there came a voice to him, rise Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, not so Lord, for I've not eaten anything that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, what God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.
This was done three times, and the vessel was received up again into heaven. So God repeated this. He wanted him to understand it was a time not of exclusion, but a time of inclusion, and even from a dietary point of view.
In 1st Timothy 4, in the Old Testament, they weren't allowed to eat certain birds. They were told they were unclean, but in 1st Timothy 4.4, it says, for every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. So the greatness of what God did for us in the new birth is so wonderful.
We can sample anything we please, and just go out and eat it. If you like chicken feet, try it. It's kind of rubbery and not much meat there, but have at it.
So that's the change with the grace administration. Now birds are also used to illustrate bad things in the Bible. In Revelation, it talks about the fall of unclean spirits that have been caged as being unclean birds.
They're also mentioned as destroyers. Let's just look at this briefly. In Jeremiah 15, it says there are four kinds of destroyers listed here in creation.
The Eagle, the Serpent, and Final Victory
In Jeremiah 15, verse 3, and I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord, the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the birds of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. Why did God set it up to talk about birds and devourers? Well, it's part of the message in the stars. So there are specific constellations.
There's one where the whole serpent is going along the heavens, and there's a crow on top of the serpent picking at his flesh. So that's part of the imagery that God wanted men to understand, that the serpent's demise, it was going to get cleaned up by the birds of prey. And to close here, we're going to talk about Psalm 103 and some other verses that you may be familiar with talking about the eagle.
So I know a number of us have had exposure over the years to teaching about the holy eagle in the east that rises up to a great height, and then it plunges into the water, and it loses all its feathers, and then it has to somehow manage to get to shore and crawl out on the beach and then hide under the bushes and for six months wait for its feathers to grow out. So I've heard this story for years, and it was hard for me to understand because from a natural world perspective, it just didn't make sense to me. And I always understood it as a mythological explanation that perhaps it wasn't always taught that it was mythological, but it could only be mythological because if birds are going to be featherless under a bush for six months waiting on human beings to allow them to continue their race, they're going to be a dead duck even if they are an eagle.
So I could not understand that. So I wanted to understand this from a natural world perspective. But before doing that, I went to study figures of speech just to make sure that I had fully understood here because there are legitimate figures of speech in the Bible, and there is a figure of speech called fable.
So the story of the holy eagle would be in the category of a fable. So I thought, well, maybe I need to consider this in the category of a fable. So I went to E. W. Bollinger's book on figure of speech, and he has an article on fable.
And he specifically states what a fable is, that it's a legitimate figure. And then he says the figure fable is not used once in the entire Bible. So fable is out for the explanation.
Okay, so exhausted that possibility. What can the natural world teach us about the holy eagle? Well, we'll read, there are two verses I want to read. This is the first, Psalm 103 verse 5, who satisfies thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.
So instead of the idea of plunging in and losing all its feathers at once, what is this all about? And the other one here is Isaiah 40. So youth renewed like the eagles, satisfies thy mouth with good things. Now we'll go to Isaiah 40.
This is the other one. Some of you may have memorized this verse before. Isaiah 40.
I'm in the wrong pew here. Just a second. Isaiah 40 verse 31.
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.
Well, when does an eagle mount up? An eagle mounts up after it has made a catch, after it has vanquished the prey. Then it flies back upward, and it goes and eats it itself, or it takes it to its eaglets so that they can eat it. Now this is depicted in the heavens.
There's a constellation called Lyra, and we actually saw Lyra last night. It's hard to see more than one star, but the main star in Lyra is the fifth brightest star in the sky. It was Vega.
It was up here last night, and it depicts a harp, and it indicates a song of praise ascending as an eagle toward heaven, and its significance is praise prepared for the conqueror. In the Zodiac of Dendera, Lyra is illustrated not as a harp, but as a hawk or eagle in triumph. So to better understand this picture, we need to remember that the eagle is the natural mortal enemy of the serpent.
Let's go to Genesis 3, and we'll read Genesis 315, what God said to man about the coming promised seed. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It, the seed of the serpent, shall bruise thy head, and thou, the seed of the woman, shall bruise his heel.
I got to see a fantastic National Geographic video. I would recommend that you Google it and watch it yourself. Just Google sea eagle versus sea snake.
But I've seen one of these sea eagles, and they are in the South China Sea, and there are these long snakes that are banded, so they're silver-black, silver-black, silver-black. And because they're snakes, they have to breathe, but they live in the sea. So every once in a while, they have to come up for air.
Now, eagles can see eight times better than human beings. An eagle can see a mile off. They can see a small mammal a mile off.
I can't even see anything a mile off, but an eagle is that sharp of an eyesight. So the eagle is flying, and it's watching the bands of the snake, and it can see that it's headed to the surface. And it times its capture perfectly so that the moment that the serpent comes up for air, bam, hits the head, carries it off, and feeds it to the eaglets.
Now, in this particular video, the strike was not perfect. The strike ended up being a little bit down the neck from the top of the head. So the eagle's flying away, and the serpent has its mouth wide open with its fangs, trying to get a bite, and it manages to bite the leg of the But the eagle is quick.
It moves its leg out fast enough that the venom is not injected, and it carries it away. And when it gets to the nest, it rips off its head, and it feeds it and the blood of the serpent to its eaglets. Well, think about that picture, and then think about Bruce's head and Bruce's heel.
The sea eagle pulls its bruised heel away from the unsuccessful strike, and the writhing sea snake is helpless, as it is left trailing behind on the way to the impending doom of a bruised head. Truly, this is the Witness of the Birds, a vivid illustration of joy as the Redeemer overcomes the enemy in the final victory. God bless you.
Key Takeaways
- The diversity and specialized behavior of birds testify to deliberate wisdom and design in creation.
- God can use aspects of creation that are personally meaningful to instruct, encourage, and reach an individual heart.
- Scripture repeatedly uses birds to illustrate provision, protection, guidance, gentleness, renewal, and trust.
- Bird migration, navigation, flight, and instinct provide practical pictures of creatures responding to the order God established.
- The concluding eagle-and-serpent imagery points to the promised victory of the Redeemer over the adversary.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the central message of The Witness of the Birds?
Birds display remarkable design and behavior that point to God’s wisdom, care, provision, and the truths He communicates through creation and Scripture.
How are birds used as biblical illustrations?
The teaching discusses birds as pictures of brooding care, provision, protection, guidance, renewal, gentleness, spiritual awareness, and victory.
Why does the teaching emphasize observing creation?
Careful observation helps believers recognize lessons God built into creation and see familiar biblical figures with greater clarity and appreciation.
Scripture References
Genesis 1:2, 20–26; Genesis 2:19–20; Genesis 8:6–12; Genesis 9:2; Job 12:7–10; Job 35:11; Exodus 19:4; Psalm 17:8; Psalm 18; Psalm 91:4; 1 Kings 17; 1 Kings 19:11–12; Jeremiah 8:7; Matthew 3:16; Matthew 10:16, 29–31; Acts 10; Psalm 103:5; Isaiah 40:31; Genesis 3:15
Verification Note
Prepared from a recovered machine transcript supplied by the user. Verify bird names, scientific claims, Hebrew terms, quotations, verse references, punctuation, and unclear phrases against the original audio and a Bible before publication.
