Matthew 6:28-29
"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

The tropical looking flower Virginia Meadow Beauty offers some rare tricks for those who would pollinate it. A honeybee can poke around the flower all day and never get any pollen from the gaudy pink flowers. In fact, researchers report that honeybees don't seem to know what to do with the flowers. Rather, the Virginia Meadow Beauty is pollinated by bumblebees, not honeybees.
    
The pollen of a newly opened pink flower is good only for that day. But the flowers stay open for several days. It signals the bumblebees that the pollen in old flowers are not good by changing colors. Yet, the spent flowers are serving one more purpose. Researchers report that large displays, even if mostly spent flowers, attract more bumblebees than small displays of all fresh flowers. 
    
How is it that the bumblebee can get the pollen and the honeybees can't? They just buzz. And when a bumblebee buzzes, the flower ejects its pollen at 30 times the force of gravity – a force greater than any astronaut must endure! It's not that the bumblebee gets the pollen because it is larger than a honeybee; no, even bumblebees no larger than the honeybee's head can get the pollen. It's the frequency of buzzing. The Lord has abundantly provided for the Meadow Beauty. And He has provided for your forgiveness and salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Notes: J. Travis, "Color code tells bumblebees where to buzz," Science News, v. 155, April 3, 1999. p. 215.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

“In a ruling that human rights groups are calling historic, India's Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the country's transsexual and transgender individuals the right to self-identify their gender. The ruling means transsexual and transgender people and those who identify as belonging to the ‘third gender’ will not be required to submit medical evidence of their sexuality to be recognized by the government as a member of that gender, said Tripti Tandon, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs. A plea was filed before the Supreme Court by India's National Legal Services Authority in 2012 on behalf of the transsexual and ‘hijra,’ or third-gender, communities. ‘The Supreme Court ruled that everyone has the fundamental right to have their gender identified and recognized in the law without any discrimination,’ Tandon said. ‘And it's self-identification of the gender as opposed to medically or surgically assigned one.’... The ruling states that ‘gender identity is integral to the dignity of an individual and is at the core of personal autonomy and self-determination.’ Hijras, the ruling said, must be considered a third gender ‘over and above binary genders under our Constitution and the laws.’”

(“Indian Court Recognizes Gender Self-identification,” CNN, April 16, 2014)

Genesis 8:22
"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

Climate researchers are developing more complex computer models in an effort to discover the effects of climate changes. One unexpected conclusion is that greenhouse warming of the Earth may not be happening; even if it is, it may not be a bad thing. Researchers have also had to admit that the natural climate changes of the Earth are much wider than originally thought.
    
In one computer model, researchers assumed that carbon dioxide would increase in the atmosphere by 1 percent a year. In another, they assumed 0.5 percent increase, and in yet another model they assumed no increase. The study yielded mixed results. Central and western Europe would see no abnormal change in river runoff. River runoff would increase in northern Europe, but decrease in southern Europe. 
    
Their model also showed that wheat crops would increase in several European countries, with no abnormal changes in other countries. In fact, researchers found that an increase in carbon dioxide would cause a 9 to 39 percent increase in wheat crops throughout Europe.
    
Science is discovering that what God promised Noah after the Flood is true: "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night shall not cease."

Notes: C. Wu, "Fickle climate thwarts future forecasts," Science News, v. 155, February 27, 1999, p. 133.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

CCM musicians Michael Gungor and Nichole Nordeman are members of The Liturgies, “a collective of creators working together to make thoughtful liturgical work.” Both names were listed on The Liturgies web site under “Who” when I did this research on June 7, 2014. One of The Liturgies is “God Our Mother,” which includes the following words: “To know only the Father God would be like seeing the bright, dazzling sun, but never the stars spreading across the sky like so much fairy dust. God our Mother, reaching out to us with those hands--mother hands, strong and coursing with love, binding up wounds and soothing scrapes, holding us together, holding us safe. God our Mother, feeding us, nourishing us, giving us what we need to grow and thrive, taking care of us in big and small ways, seeing us, knitting us back together with love and grace when we've been broken. God our Mother, believing in us” (See Website). The goal of The Liturgies is to create an “apophatic meditation” that enables the practitioner to “experience a connection with God.” The lyrics are accompanied by New Age-style music that is potentially trance inducing. The Liturgies are associated with contemplative prayer practices that come from Roman Catholic monasticism. The objective is to find God “beyond human language.” This is blind mysticism and is a recipe for spiritual disaster. The “god” that is encountered beyond the language of Scripture is an idol.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 8, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Matthew 19:4-5
"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?"

With the creation of Adam and Eve, God also created the marriage relationship and blessed it. God knows how we are made. He knows how we work. And He had all that in mind when He designed the marriage relationship. For this reason, one would expect that trying to fashion a family by simply living together would result in less happiness than when properly married.
    
Numerous studies have shown the results of couples living together without the benefit of marriage. One 1992 study, conducted by a group based at Rutgers University, showed that even cohabitors who eventually got married had a 46 percent greater chance of divorce than those who had begun in a proper marriage relationship. A more recent study by a Bowling Green University researcher measured and compared the depression scores between married couples and cohabitors. Married people had an average depression score of 13.3, while cohabitors showed a higher depression score of 17.2.
    
Cohabiting is even worse for the children. Thirty six percent of the children born to cohabitors who later married will see their parents divorce. Only one third of the children born to married people will see their parents divorce. It is clear that in His love for us, God designed marriage for our happiness and blessing.

Notes: Mona Charen, "Before you decide on moving in," Washington Times, March 26, 1999, Third Age News Service; "Marriage gets the nod for satisfaction," Brainerd Daily Dispatch (Minn.), September 6, 1998.
Photo: Courtesy of Jeff Belmonte. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Genesis 1:31
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day..."

New findings about how the human nose works may help explain why a world that was perfect when it was made has come to have so many stinky things in it. Humans and mammals hold the record among all creatures with about 1,000 genes for odor receptors. But with only 1,000 different kinds of odor receptors, how is it we can smell over 10,000 different kinds of scents? 
    
For example, nonanoic acid uses the same receptors as nonanol, plus two others. Nonanol literally produces the smell of a rose. Yet those same receptors, plus the extra two that nonanoic acid activate, will produce a cheesy odor. Even more amazing is the discovery that virtually identical molecules can produce very different scents. Octanol produces a rosy, orangey scent, while octanoic acid produces a rancid, sweaty odor. Yet the two molecules are identical except for an extra side chain of atoms.
    
This may go a long way in explaining how a perfect creation of vegetarian creatures came to have rotten smells and to be meat eaters. A minor modification of a "good" scent can turn it into a "bad" scent. This seems to be confirmed by the discovery that the same receptors that allow mice to smell grain and seeds allow rats to smell meat. The decay man's sin brought to the creation didn't mean that God had to make new things. "Good" molecules simply decayed into a slightly different form with "bad" effects. We thank God we have a Savior in His Son, Jesus Christ, Who will deliver us from the decay that is in the world!

Notes: John Travis, "Making Sense of Scents," Science News, v. 155, April 10, 1999, p. 236.
Illustration: Courtesy of Chabacano. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

“The son of one of the founding members of Hamas has spoken out against the militant organization and the way the group targets civilians. Mosab Hassan Yousef is a Christian convert and author of Son of Hamas. In an interview with CNN, he said Hamas militants seek to take over the Middle East, and do not care how many lives are lost in order to do so. ‘Hamas does not care about the lives of Palestinians, does not care about the lives of Israelis or Americans. They don’t care about their own lives. They consider dying for the sake of their ideology a way of worship,’ Yousef said. Though groomed from a young age to become a Hamas militant, Yousef became disenchanted with the mission of the group and adopted Christianity, losing everything he had in the process. ‘In the mosques, Hamas taught us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology, we wouldn't be able to build an Islamic state. They were preparing us from the age as young as five years old. This is the ideology that Hamas was feeding us. And honestly it’s impossible almost for anybody to break through and see the truth and real face of Hamas and be able to leave at some point.’”

(“Son of Hamas Founder,” Christian Headlines, July 28, 2014)

Psalm 8:3-4b
"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?"

We have all heard reports of astronomers claiming that they have discovered a planet orbiting some nearby star. Each announcement results in speculation about whether there is intelligent life on the newly discovered planet. Lost is the fact that some planets are larger than Jupiter and made of gas. Scientists discover these planets by studying hundreds of telescopic pictures of a suspect star to see if there may be a tiny wobble in its position. A single-motion wobble is explained by the existence of one orbiting planet, meaning that this solar system does not have multiple planets like ours does.
    
That situation changed with an announcement in April 1999. Two teams of researchers announced that they had discovered three planets orbiting nearby star Upsilon Andromedae. However, this solar system is not like ours either. The inner planet is so close to the star that it is hotter than Mercury – no life there. The second planet's orbit takes it close to the star, then swings wide away from it. Such an orbit would provide temperature conditions far too erratic for life like that on Earth. The third planet is too far from Upsilon Andromedae and, thus, too cold to provide a home for life like ours.
    
Our solar system is not a result of chance but has been uniquely designed for life by a loving Creator. Not only is Earth's distance from the sun just right for life, but its orbit provides the even, moderate conditions that life requires.

Notes: R. Cowen, "Astronomers Find Planetary System," Science News, v. 155, April 17, 1999. p. 244.
Image: Artist's rendition of Upsilon Andromedae A with two of its four planets. Courtesy of Drtony999. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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In an interview published in the Argentine weekly “Viva,” July 27, Pope Francis listed his top ten tips for “bringing greater joy to one’s life.” There was no mention of God or Jesus Christ or salvation. In brief, the tips were (1) Live and let live, (2) Give of yourself to others, (3) Proceed calmly in life, (4) Have a healthy sense of leisure, (5) Sundays should be holidays “because “Sunday is for family,” (6) Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people, (7) Respect and take care of nature, (8) Stop being negative, (9) Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs, (10) Work for peace. The focus on unity, non-proselytizing, world peace, respect of all beliefs, and environmentalism identify Francis as a New Age pope who is a major figure in the creation of the apostate one-world “church” of Revelation 17.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 8, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

On June 1, more than 50,000 charismatic Catholics attended a rally at Rome’s Olympic Stadium. One highlight of the event was a special prayer for Pope Francis to be “filled with the Spirit.” As he knelt by his papal chair, the crowd murmured charismatic prayers; including gibberish “tongues,” and “sang in the spirit.” Many, including bishops and cardinals, raised their hands toward the pope (“How Pope Francis Reacted,” Charisma, June 11, 2014). In a brazen reminder of the heretical nature of the setting, a life-size statue of Rome’s Mary, the Queen of Heaven, stood at the front of the papal podium. The pope exhorted the charismatic crowd to exercise “spiritual ecumenism” to heal divisions among Christians. He also invited the charismatics to St. Peter’s Square for Pentecost in 2017 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “charismatic renewal” in the Catholic Church. The “renewal” began when Assemblies of God Pentecostals laid hands on Catholics in 1967. Pope Francis says that he was opposed to the “charismatic renewal” when it first began, but now he is enthusiastic and claims to speak in “tongues” himself (“Pope, at Charismatic Rally,” Catholic News Service, June 2, 2014). Nothing is bringing the end-time, “one-world church” together more effectively than the charismatic movement and its contemporary music.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 8, 2014,www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

“A reasoning and speculative mind is inconsistent with a humble worshiping spirit. God has laid down His own definitions, His measurements and dimensions of truth. The Father alone knoweth the Son. It is our place reverently to bow, and believe what He has recorded touching the Lord Jesus.”




(Henry Soltau, The Tabernacle the Priesthood and the Offerings, c. 1850)

Genesis 1:16
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also."

Astronomers who believe in evolution tell us that the stars formed when gas in a nebula began to gather due to gravity. Eventually, that gravity became strong enough to collapse the gas into a star.

Astronomers who believe in creation point out that this is unlikely, if not impossible. As we all know, compressed gas wants to expand by moving to areas of lower pressure. A cloud of gas that was large enough to begin compressing under gravity would begin to rotate faster. Magnetic forces would also increase. The increase in pressure, magnetic forces and centrifugal forces would overcome the forces of gravity, preventing the formation of a star.

At the same time, blue stars are common in the arms of the galaxies we can see. These stars are considered young because they burn their fuel so fast that they could only last a few million evolutionary years. On the evolutionary scale, they must have formed long after the Big Bang. The number of blue stars would then indicate to an evolutionist that star formation is common. Yet, as we have seen, the forces at work to form a star in this way make these stars either unlikely or younger than millions of years.

Perhaps God created the blue stars to serve as a clear indicator to scientists that He created the stars fairly recently.

Notes: Answers Magazine, 10-12/07, pp. 78-80, Jason Lisle, "The Stars of Heaven Confirm Biblical Creation."
Photo: Alcyon, in Pleiades Star Cluster, a typical blue giant star.
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Israel is introducing the myth of evolution to its middle school core curriculum next year. Until now, only the biblical account of creation was taught. In order to avoid problems with Orthodox Jews, the Education Ministry is omitting animal to man evolution. Dr. Ariel Chipman, a lecturer in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told Ynet news that only by withholding human evolution was the professional committee able to introduce natural selection to the curriculum. “If this is what allows [the government] to insert the theory of evolution--such an important subject--into the education system, then as far as I’m concerned it’s fine and welcome” (“Darwin Enters Israeli Schools,” The Times of Israel, June 1, 2014). Evolution is not a theory. There is zero evidence that the universe came from nothing, that life sprang from non-life, that intelligence arose from non-intelligence, or that complex organs and creatures evolved through blind “naturalistic” processes. Darwin’s “natural selection” explains nothing, for it has no creative power. The same is true for every other Darwinian attempt to explain life, including mutations and the Big Bang.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 1, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Psalm 46:2
"Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."

Charles Darwin's ignorance of geology, a science he never studied, probably resulted in the biological errors he made in formulating his theory of biological evolution.

As he sailed on the Beagle to the Pacific, Charles Darwin read Charles Lyell's book, Principles of Geology. That book, of course, theorized that the Earth's geology was the result of the slow processes we see today working over millions of years. On the way to the Galapagos, he had a 16-day stopover in Argentina. He spent some of the time exploring the valley of the lower Santa Cruz River. He later wondered in his journal how the small and lazy Santa Cruz River could have carved the 300-foot-deep valley. But he allowed that Lyell's idea of long ages could solve that problem.

Later, at the Galapagos, he tried to explain plant and animal diversity based on those same long ages. Today, geologists believe that melting glaciers at the headwaters of the river formed a huge lake behind a natural dam. When that dam broke, the rushing lake water quickly cut a spillway that became the valley through which the Santa Cruz River gently flows today.

It appears as though Darwin's assumption that Lyell knew what he was talking about when he wrote of long geological ages influenced his biological interpretations.

Notes: Acts & Facts, 7/08, pp. 10-12, Steven A. Austin, "Red Rock Pass: Spillway of the Bonneville Flood."
Photo: Crossing the River Santa Cruz at Comandante Luis Piedra Buena, Argentina. Courtesy of James Cadwell. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia is strengthening its ties with some of America’s worst enemies. In Asia, it is bolstering its relationship with North Korea, the most brutal dictatorship on earth and a nation that has threatened to annihilate America. Russia’s legislative body voted recently to cancel nearly $10 billion in debt which stems from loans made during the era of the Soviet Union and pledged to help build a railroad and gas pipeline through North Korea to South Korea across Siberia (“Putin Looking to Get Better Ties with North Korea,” The World Post, June 4, 2014). One expert called the new development a “sort of renaissance” of the Russia-North Korean relationship. In the Middle East, Russia has pledged to build two more nuclear power plants in Iran (“Iran, Russia Agree to Continue Nuclear Cooperation,” ITAR-TASS, May 29, 2014). This comes as Iran’s “supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that negotiations over the country’s nuclear program are over and jihad will continue until America is destroyed. He said that those who are negotiating with the West “commit treason” (“Iran’s Supreme Leader: Jihad Will Continue until America Is No More,” Daily Caller, May 25, 2014). In Bible prophecy, Russia is the Gog and Magog that will arm and lead a great military alliance to its destruction on Israel’s hills (Ezekiel 38-39). Russia has a history of anti-Semitism that stems to ancient times. The Russian Czars stirred up animosity against the Jews by spreading lies about them. One of the chief propaganda cries of Russian communism was “Zionism is Racism.” Russia has been arming Israel’s Muslim enemies since the early 1950s. When Israel penetrated the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 to force Egypt to allow free movement for its ships, Russia threatened her with annihilation (Moshe Dayan, Diary of the Sinai Campaign, 1966, p. 185). In 1984, the U.S. ambassador dealing with human rights under the Helsinki Accords said, “Berlin was once the world capital of anti-Semitism; I am afraid that today it is Moscow.” Pravda, Russia’s official government newspaper, featured an article on June 30, 2002, entitled “Explosion of Anti-Semitism in Russia.” The Israel Insider, June 30, 2005, stated: “It seems that just as anti-Semitism was at the very core of the old Russia; it is at the very core of the new Russia.” Anti-Semitic papers such as Russkaya Pravda, Vitaz and Peresvet are sold on Moscow streets and in subway stations and some political parties use anti-Semitic statements to garner support.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 1, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Genesis 7:21
"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man."

The Bible says that when the flood waters came upon the Earth, all living things that have the breath of life were killed. While many of them drowned, some were encased in mud while still alive, as some fossils show. What they all had in common is that they died from lack of oxygen.

Paleontologists have long noted that many animal fossils are found with their heads thrown back. This is called the "dead bird" position. Some paleontologists assumed that the fossilized creature had fallen into the water when it died where the current pushed its head back. Others suggested that when rigor mortis set in, the head was pulled back. A third suggestion was that as the body decayed, drying tendons in the back of the neck pulled it back.

A little research ruled out rigor mortis as the cause of the "dead bird" position. Experiments using tendons from several different animals ruled out the "drying tendons" explanation. Finally, a credible explanation was found. Nerve damage. Specifically, the kind of nerve damage caused by lack of oxygen. While there are several causes for hypoxia, the most common cause is drowning.

That the "dead bird" position is so common among fossils paints a picture of the death that was a result of God's judgment in the Flood. His mercy to Noah shows us His love.

Notes: Science News, 6/23/07, p. 390, C. Barry, "Jurassic CSI." For more information about the "dinosaur death pose": www.genesispark.com/exhibits/trivia/death-pose/.
Photo from the Genesis Park website.
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Bob Eschliman, editor of a secular newspaper, was fired in May for airing his personal views against homosexual activism. The 41-year-old Eschliman had been editor-in-chief of the Newton Daily News (Newton, Iowa) for about two years when he was terminated for protesting the Queen James Bible on his personal blog. He accused the “Gaystapo” of trying to amend the Bible “to make their sinful nature ‘right with God’” (“Newspaper Editor Fired over Blog,” The Blaze, July 24, 2014). Though he removed the blog after someone in the community complained about it, he was fired anyway. John Rung, president of Shaw Media, which owns the Newton Daily News, said, “While he is entitled to his opinion, his public airing of it compromised the reputation of this newspaper and his ability to lead it.” Eschliman, who has been blacklisted and has been unable to get another job, has filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Commission for wrong termination. He is represented by the Liberty Institute.


(Friday Church News Notes, August 1, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Genesis 13:8
"And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren."

People and animals recognize their siblings and generally treat them differently than unrelated acquaintances. Scientists wanted to know: do plants do the same thing?

Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, studied the Great Lakes searocket with the hope of finding out. This member of the mustard family grows on the sandy beaches of lakes and the Atlantic coast. First, they collected seeds along a beach. They kept a record of which seeds were collected from the same mother plant. Then they planted the seeds in groups. Some of the groups had unrelated plants, while other groupings were all siblings.

After the plants had grown long enough to develop good, aggressive root systems, researchers carefully removed the root systems from the sand in which they were growing. After rinsing and drying the roots, they weighed each plant's root system. They learned that unrelated plants growing in a group had 15 percent more root system than siblings growing together. In other words, unrelated plants grew a more aggressive root system for gathering water and nutrients. Siblings were less aggressive toward each other. In short, sibling plants seemed to have recognized each other.

Just as godly Abram did not wish to aggressively compete with his nephew, apparently some plants do the same.

Notes: Science News, 6/16/07, p. 372, S. Milius, "Easy There, Bro."
Photo: Courtesy: United States Dept. of Agriculture.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

James Robison is a loud warning of the danger of the charismatic movement. In the 1970s, Robison was a strong Southern Baptist evangelist, preaching boldly against the theological liberalism that had permeated his denomination and that urgently needed to be rooted out, but during a personal spiritual crisis in 1982, and at the urging of his wife Betty, he allowed a charismatic preacher named Milton Green to minister to him. Green said Robison was “the most demonized man I ever met,” and Robison claims that his “deliverance” was like a giant claw being removed from his brain. I don’t know what happened to Robison in that strange encounter, but I do know that as a consequence of his experience he turned away from reproving sin and false teaching and made a radical turn to the ecumenical philosophy. He began to focus on non-judgmentalism and “unity” and began developing close relationships with the most radical of charismatic preachers, such as Paul Yonggi Cho, Paul Crouch, Kenneth Copeland, and Oral Roberts. (See our book The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements for documentation of these men’s heresies and nuttiness.) In the Jan.-Feb. 1986 issue of his magazine, Days of Restoration, Robison said: “There are going to be MIRACLES, SIGNS AND WONDERS surpassing anything seen even in New Testament times. ... EVERY TRUE DISCIPLE WILL BE DOING THE KIND OF WORKS JESUS DID.” Robison even apologized for his part in the struggle between conservative Bible believers and theological liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention. He visited liberal Baylor University and apologized to the leaders, when he should rather have rebuked them for giving the wicked doctrine of evolution and other heresies a haven in this Baptist institution. At the July 1987 North American Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization, the newly minted charismatic Robison praised the Mary-venerating Pope John Paul II and said, “People who know it really believe he is a born again man.” I was seated only a few feet from him when he said this, having attended the conference with media credentials. The charismatic movement and its contemporary music is the most effective building block of the one-world church. Any spirit that does not reprove error and heresy is not the Spirit of God, who is called the “Spirit of truth” four times in Scripture.

(Friday Church News Notes, August 1, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Isaiah 54:11
"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stone with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires."

Squid and chameleons change colors. So does the golden tortoise beetle. But it does so in a way never before seen.

Squid and chameleons change colors by signaling pigment cells in their skin to shrink or expand. The golden tortoise beetle uses an entirely different method. The beetle is normally a very shiny golden color. But when disturbed, it turns blood red. The secret of its color change lies in the unique structure of its shell. It is made up of transparent chitin. The chitin is arranged in three levels, each with their own layers. In between the layers are microscopic channels, connecting them together. Normally, the beetles' body fluid fills the layers, smoothing them into perfect mirrors. But when disturbed, the body fluid flows out, making the shell transparent and revealing a bright red fourth layer.

Scientists quickly recognized that this design could lead to some important new technology. "Nature never stops surprising us with elegant solutions to everyday problems," said a chemist at GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York.

This design is such an "elegant solution" to some engineering problems that "nature" must be given credit as if it were a being. Why not just recognize that the Designer of this "elegant solution" is the Triune God Who created it and uses color to show His glory to His creation?

Notes: Science News, 8/18/07, p. 99, C. Barry, "Mood Bugs."
Photo: Courtesy of Ilona Loser. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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James Robison, former Southern Baptist evangelist turned charismatic, has joined hands with Pope Francis to build a one-world church. On his blog, Robison described his June 24 audience with the pope, calling it a “supernatural gathering at the Vatican.” The pope cleverly used “evangelical” terminology to describe his heretical Catholic doctrine, saying that he wanted “everyone to have a personal life-changing encounter with Christ,” ignoring the fact that Rome’s dogma teaches salvation through the sacraments, beginning with baptism. The very gullible James Robison gave the pope a “high five,” thus fulfilling the warning of Romans 16:17-18. Robison wrote, “This week I was blessed to be part of perhaps an unprecedented moment between evangelicals and the Catholic Pope. On Tuesday, for nearly three hours, a few of us were blessed to meet in an intimate circle of prayerful discussion and lunch ... We continued in such glorious fellowship that words could never begin to describe it. I am fighting back tears even as I write, so glorious was the manifest presence of Jesus. I couldn't help but wonder in those moments if Jesus, as He did when Stephen was stoned leading to the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to become Paul the Apostle, perhaps once again stood at the right hand of the Father looking down on that scene in Rome between Evangelicals and the Pope, turn to the Father and say, ‘Look, I think my prayer is about to be answered. Look, Dad...’” (Robison, “Witnessing the Miracle Jesus Prayed For,” JamesRobison.net, June 26, 2014). The papal audience was attended by James and Betty Robison, John Arnott (leader of the “Toronto Blessing” where people screamed, jerked, laughed hysterically, howled like wolves, brayed like donkeys. and clucked like chickens), Tony Palmer, Kenneth Copeland, and others. Palmer, who was the pope’s representative to Pentecostals and who arranged for the pope to send ecumenical greetings to the Pentecostal pastors attending a Kenneth Copeland crusade in February, was killed June 20 in a motorcycle crash.

Photo: Those who met with Pope Francis on Tuesday are, from left, Carol Arnott, the Rev. John Arnott, the Rev. Brian Stiller, the Rev. Kenneth Copeland, Pope Francis, the Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, the Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe, the Rev. James Robison, Betty Robison and Bishop Tony Palmer.
(Friday Church News Notes, August 1, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

“Failure to realize the true, awful nature of sin lies at the root of man’s denial of eternal punishment. Man revolts at the idea that a loving God will punish His creature in an eternal hell. Modern preachers love to tell us that God is love and that He will do no such thing at all; but all such talk is silenced immediately when we get a true picture of these two things: God’s HOLINESS, and the AWFULNESS OF SIN. Sin is not a little thing. We repeat this without apology. It is the cause of every sorrow in the world. It blights lives, breaks homes, kills children, beclouds reason, slays the body, and damns the soul”

(M.R. DeHaan, M.D., The Tabernacle, 1955).

“Dr Caleb Rossiter--an adjunct professor at American University, Washington DC--has been fired by a progressive think tank after publicly expressing doubt about man-made global warming. Rossiter, a former Democratic congressional candidate, has impeccably liberal credentials. As the founder of Demilitarization for Democracy he has campaigned against US backed wars in Central America and Southern Africa, against US military support for dictators and against anti-personnel landmines. But none of this was enough to spare him the wrath of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) when he wrote an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) describing man-made global warming as an ‘unproved science.’  Two days later, he was sacked by email. ... In the WSJ OpEd entitled ‘Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,’ Rossiter argued that Africans should benefit from the same mixed energy policy as Americans rather than being denied access to fossil fuels on spurious environmental grounds by green activists. He wrote: ‘The left wants to stop industrialization--even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false.’... His sacking follows the persecution last month of Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish meteorologist and climatologist who decided to resign his position at the Global Warming Policy Foundation after being harassed by climate alarmists for his ‘incorrect" views on man-made climate change.’”

(“Climate McCarthyism Claims Another Victim,” Breitbart.com, June 13, 2014)

John 15:1
"I AM the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman."

The evolutionary story of man's history tells us that it took man tens of thousands of years to figure out he could farm crops for himself. Yet, today we know that some termites, ants and ambrosia beetles actually cultivate food crops.

In the world's oceans there are simpler approaches, called protofarming, among a few creatures. Protofarming is nothing more than where limpets and some damselfish graze on established algae. Now scientists have found an example of true farming among one species of damselfish. This fish feeds on a species of red alga that grows in a brown carpet. It protects it from other creatures looking for a salad. It also weeds its patch of any other algae, actually moving the interloping algae out of its patch. When a damselfish was removed from its patch, it was quickly devoured by other creatures and could not replace itself. A survey showed that the brown carpet alga only grows where there is a damselfish to tend it. It actually depends on the damselfish to survive.

Farming is not an invention of man, but a gift of God. It is clear that God gave the gift of farming to those creatures He wished to have this gift. God often compares Himself with a farmer in Scripture. Ultimately, He calls Himself a farmer, and Jesus Christ the vine, and believers in Christ the branches.

Notes: Science News, 8/12/06, p. 102, S. Milius, "Fish as Farmers."
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