Nearly 100 heads of State heading to South Africa to honor Mandela; Biden honors Mandela in Washington; 11 dead whales suffered from malnutrition; Newtown seeks privacy on anniversary of shooting. Storm moves up coast; Leaders arrive for Mandela memorial; Fatal train wreck in Indonesia; Kennedy Center honors. The national celebration of Thanksgiving is a unique American institution that has its origin in a 1621 thanksgiving feast held by the Pilgrims in gratitude for the blessings of the Almighty Creator God. They were grateful in spite of the fact that nearly half of their number had died the first winter in the New World. By the fall of the second year, having among other things learned planting and survival lessons from an English-speaking Indian, the Pilgrims were prospering and wanted to celebrate their first successful crop and their new-found liberty from government tyranny. The annual fall celebration continued as an American tradition. The Continental Congress proclaimed a national thanksgiving in 1777 and urged “that servile labor and such recreations (although at other times innocent) may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment [and should] be omitted on so solemn an occasion.” President George Washington proclaimed a nationwide thanksgiving celebration for the new nation at the urging of Congress, marking November 26, 1789, as a day to “to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” In 1817, New York became the first state to adopt Thanksgiving as an official holiday. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving day with the blessing of both houses of Congress. In 1941, the U.S. Congress set the date of Thanksgiving for the last Thursday of November. Since 1957, Canada has had a national Thanksgiving day on the second Monday of October. Historically, the Thanksgiving celebration in America was deeply religious, with church services and praise to God through Jesus Christ. Over the past century the celebration has been increasingly secularized and has deteriorated into little more than a worldly party. In recent years, it has become an occasion for unbridled commercialism. Black Friday began in the 1960s as the kickoff to the Christmas holiday season, but it has taken on more of a frenzy in the 21st century. (“Black” refers to retailers moving into the black or profitability in sales.) Stores use discounts and a wide variety of gimmicks to attract customers, and it has become popular to shop in the early hours of Friday morning. People have been injured and even killed in the mad rush. Now many national retailers open on Thanksgiving itself rather than give their employees the day off. (Friday Church News Notes, December 6, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Hebrews 11:13 “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” One of the most frequent questions we receive at Creation Moments is: “Where do you get all that fascinating information?” Is there a book that contains all these interesting programs? Yes, Creation Moments does publish all these programs into a series of books titled Letting God Create Your Day. But the program material is actually from two sources. One is Scripture, and here we are given the key of what to look for. The other is nature, or better said, God’s Creation, which is what we see and observe around us. When this program first began, it took some time to find the material, but over the years this has become easier. It might be said that our vision for seeing the hand of God as our Creator has increased. The key, then, is that we have learned to see it. The material for a broadcast may come from a magazine, newspaper or scientific journal, or a nature TV program. The hand of our Creator is all around us, and we learn to see it. There’s one other key to this vision. It helps us to get used to looking at all things in this world through the eyes of faith, and that means reading the Word of God on a regular basis. We hope that these programs have helped you see a little better. Photo: Individual volumes or the complete collection of Letting God Create Your Day books are available from the Creation Moments bookstore. www.creationmoments.com. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com Icy glaze and snow moving South to North; Nelson Mandela remembered in prayers; Protesters topple Lenin statue; Giant Christmas Stollen unveiled. The spiritual confusion of the ecumenical movement was evident in a statement from the recent Mighty Men Conference in Nashville. The event featured American Idol’s Scotty McCreery, country rocker Charlie Daniels, and “drumming sensation” Stikyard.* The conferences were founded by Pentecostal evangelist Angus Buchan in 2004 in South Africa. In America they are organized by Pentecostal pastor G. Allen Jackson of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They are similar to Promise Keepers events, featuring messages geared for men mixed with a large dose of ecumenicism, permeated with charismatic kingdom-building heresy, and fueled by contemporary worship. Jackson says, “Music is a big dynamic in the way we make worshiping God authentic. The [music artists], who have a heart and their own inspiration meshed right into the music, are another asset of this ... event” (“Mighty Men Conference USA’s first time in Nashville,” PRNewswire, Nov. 17, 2013). To think that authentic worship is created by borrowing the world’s sensual party music is spiritual insanity and biblical heresy. God taught us the essence of true worship through the Old Testament Tabernacle, and it was to include no element of the world. Everything was to be done in accordance with God’s Word with no admixture of human thinking and pragmatism. Everything was sacred. The holy oil and incense were not like anything in this world. The sincerity of the worshiper does not make unscriptural worship acceptable to God. This was evident when God killed Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire (Lev. 10:1-3) and Uzzah for merely steadying the ark with his hand (2 Sam. 6:6-7). (* Stikyard’s rendition of “Nothing But the Blood” is on YouTube. For a generation addicted to rock & roll, Stikyard’s pulsating, near trance-inducing percussion is glorious, but in my estimation, the mixture of godly lyrics with such a worldly sound and presentation is blasphemous. It’s like an actor reciting the third chapter of John in a clown’s suit. The message is negated by the presentation.) (Friday Church News Notes, December 6, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) U.S. detainee in North Korea returns home; Obama touts nuclear deal with Iran; Icy conditions spreading from Texas to East Coast; South Africa continues to mourn Nelson Mandela. "Pro-life advocates are expressing outrage at an announcement last Monday by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that states physicians are now free to carry out sex selection abortions. Up until this point, abortions based solely on the sex of an unborn child were widely considered illegal in the UK. Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions, issued a statement regarding reasons why authorities decided not to prosecute two abortionists caught in an undercover sting agreeing to sex selection abortions. ... Starmer said that guidance for doctors should be updated amid widespread concern over practices in abortion clinics that do not appear to be illegal. ... In February of 2012, the Telegraph reported that, despite the fact that sex selection abortion is illegal in Britain, doctors were found to be agreeing to terminate a pregnancy solely on the basis of the sex of the unborn child. Telegraph reporters accompanied pregnant women to nine abortion clinics throughout the country. In three of these facilities, doctors were recorded 'offering to arrange terminations after being told the mother-to-be did not want to go ahead with the pregnancy because of the sex of the unborn child.'" (Breitbart.com, Oct. 14, 2013) Mandela mourned as funeral date set; Hillary Clinton gets human rights award; Storm forces cancellation of Dallas Marathon; Dylan's guitar sells for $965k Mandela mourned; Severe weather in US; Storm hits UK; Pot party in Seattle. "Pastors who read their Bibles usually believe that there is a direct link between sin and demon possession. The fact is well documented that all sin is addictive in nature, that these addictions ultimately alter the mind of the sin-addict, and that the Devil takes advantage of this altered state of consciousness by taking control of the addict. In the New Testament, the literal term for demon possession is 'demonized.' I have observed, in varying cultures, both modern and primitive, what appeared to be demon possessed people who were 'possessed' through involvement in the occult, in drugs, in long exposure to overpowering rock music, in alcoholism, in involvement in cultic religions (including Roman Catholicism!), etc. We are now seeing evidence of demon possession through addiction to technology, particularly through violent video games. The London Telegraph reported that Aaron Alexis, who murdered 13 people in at the Washington Navy Yard last month, was addicted to violent video games, playing them as much as 16 hours a day, and 'friends believe it could have pushed him towards becoming a mass murderer' ('Gunman obsessed with violent video games,' The Telegraph, Sept. 17, 2013). When we were teaching in high school some years ago I asked who had played a computer game the longest and one boy said he had played non-stop for 38 hours. I know little detail of these games, but looked up a review of Grand Theft Auto IV recently and was shocked to see what Christian teens play all the time. Apparently Call of Duty (one of Alexis' favorites) has also been found to be very harmful. We are appealing to parents in our church to ban these (and other) vile, profane, immoral, blasphemous, crime promoting, murderous, anti-authority, anti-Christian games, and even to restrict their children's playing of 'harmless' video games to an hour a week. Better yet, their children should be taken outdoors and taught to kick a ball, or to swim." (Heads Up! October 2013 <[email protected]>) Deuteronomy 12:30 “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.” Spider webs can be beautiful things, although most people find spiders to be creepy and dislike them. Some spiders can give nasty bites and some are even deadly, showing us that danger often lurks with beauty. Caterpillars, centipedes, worms and scorpions all make silk, but spiders are the only species that depend on silk for catching their prey. Depending on the species, spiders have up to seven silk-making glands that produce a large number of different kinds of silk for different purposes. Silk from one gland may be used to wrap prey, while silk from another gland may be used to spin scaffolding. The female spider even has a special silk she uses for covering her eggs. The silk flows to the spinnerets out of each gland as a liquid. These organs, on the rear part of the spider’s abdomen, are movable and have nozzles at the end. The nozzles on the spinnerets can be used alone or combined in order to make a blend of different silks. The spider then draws the silk from the spinneret. The faster the spider draws the silk, the thinner and stronger it is. As you can see, the spider has been given a lot of versatility in making silk. God’s people know that danger often lurks with beauty, but we have a Savior and in Him there is forgiveness! Notes: Jo Ellen Tuthill. “Spider Webbing.” Science 82, pp. 100-102. Photo: Courtesy of Bjørn Christian Tørrissen. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com Bitter cold air moving across the country; Fast-food workers protest nationwide; Dozens dead in Central African Republic clashes; Ford unveils all-new Mustang. Fast food strike; Whale rescue attempt; Cold weather; Gigantic Christmas tree. "A friend of mine told me that her decision to restrict her wardrobe to dresses and skirts came as a result of a ladies' class.” All the arguments and reasons that could be given were unheeded until the lady who was speaking said, "Let me just demonstrate something to you." She asked the ladies in the audience to close their eyes momentarily. She held up a large picture of a woman in an attractive, feminine skirt and blouse. She asked the ladies to open their eyes. Then she inquired, "What is the primary focal point in this picture? Where did your eyes first fall naturally?" The audience agreed that their eyes were first drawn to the face of the woman in the picture. She once again asked the ladies to close their eyes. When they opened their eyes they were looking at a large poster of a woman in a sport shirt and blue jeans. She asked, "Now, be honest with yourselves, and tell me where your eyes first fell naturally when you looked at this picture?" Many of the ladies in the crowd were surprised to find that most people's eyes first focused upon [an area they all realized they should not be looking at] which was vividly emphasized before they ever noticed the woman's face. If this happened in a crowd of ladies, how much more would it be true of men? For my friend, this was all the evidence that was needed'" (What in the World Should I Wear?). (Modesty a Matter of the Heart by Kathy Murray, 2005, [email protected]) Genesis 2:1-2 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” Every engineer will agree that if an intelligent design does a good job, then use that design again. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. All warm-blooded animals generate heat as they digest their food. Large animals generate a lot of heat and, like a car engine, there has to be a cooling device. Otherwise, the heat would kill the animal, especially in a hot climate. The elephant is a perfect example. It is large and lives in a hot climate. If you were the engineer-designer, how would you overcome the heat problem? You could provide the elephant with a lower metabolic rate so that less heat is produced in the first place. But here there is a limit. No, the solution was to equip the elephant with huge ears weighing about 100 pounds each and filled with small blood vessels. By changing how close its ears are held to its body, or flapped, the elephant can control how much the blood in its ears is cooled before it is returned to the rest of its body. By the time the Lord finished the work of creation, He had solved millions of engineering problems just like this one. And these are often the same problems that today’s engineers must solve. Is it any wonder, then, that many engineers are also creationists! Notes: “How Fluids Lift Weights.” Science Digest, May 1983, p. 92. Photo: Courtesy of Mister-E. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com 911 tapes from Sandy Hook shooting released; Winter storm brings bitter cold out west; Truck with radioactive materials stolen in Mexico; White House Christmas decor revealed. Train operator reportedly nodded off before deadly crash in New York; Vice President Joe Biden travels to China; Video captures dramatic rescue at sea; Billy Joel to perform once a month at MSG. "A new practice has been observed in music choices, even in what had hitherto been considered staunch conservative institutions. That is the practice of taking songs that have their origins in the CCM or religious entertainment fields and 'cleaning them up' so they will be accepted among their constituents and the general public. A few years ago that would have been considered sheer hypocrisy. A true conservative or fundamentalist would never have dreamed of taking pop gospel tunes and cleaning them up for use in our churches and schools. ... Using such music appears to be an obvious attempt to gain acceptance by those who are already jaded by a continuous diet of that style... Many years ago I learned a principle of life that has been a faithful guide in many areas, and particularly in music. 'Stay as far away from the edge as possible.' My prayer is that God would give our pastors and church musicians the courage to stay away from the edge. A direction points toward a destination. We dare not head in the wrong direction. The danger of falling is too great." (Where Are We Headed? A Brief Look at Music in the Conservative Church Today by Reece Yandle) Psalm 146:5-6 “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is; which keepeth truth for ever.” The sea is the last, most unexplored frontier left on earth, and one of the most widespread modern myths about the sea is that life began there. In 1903, A.B. Macallam said that there was a causal relationship between the salinity of the sea and the salt content of human blood plasma. This was said to be a direct reflection of our ancient emergence from the sea. Years later, after students had been well rehearsed in this nonsense, the scientific establishment officially refuted the theory. But textbooks still tell us that life began in the sea. The salt contents of seawater and blood are not that similar, but even if they were, it has nothing to do with evolution. You see, there are salts in the earth and these find their way to the sea via the rivers. Those salts in the earth also find their way into our bodies via the food chain and are necessary for all life. So both seawater and blood are water-based solutions, and all water-based solutions must follow the same chemical principles. Blood is forced, by simple chemistry, to be somewhat similar to any other water-based salt solutions. Life did not begin in the primordial sea. The Bible tells us that God created life from the dust of the ground, the original source of the salt. Notes: Steve Olson. “Why is the Sea Constant?” Science 82, p. 112. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com Judge clears Detroit to file for bankruptcy; U.S. House honors victims of NYC train derailment; Obama says his health care law is working; Cartier jewels dazzle Paris. New York Train investigation continues; Shark attack kills fisherman in Hawaii; Protests continue in Thailand; Supreme Court declines to hear internet sales tax case. "Selfie" is Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2013. It refers to a self portrait, a practice which has gone mainstream in recent years through the proliferation of front-facing cameras on smartphones. Each year Oxford's researchers select a word or expression in the English language that "reflects the mood of the times." The word "selfie" first appeared in 2002 in an Australian online forum and in 2004 on the website Flickr, but its usage exploded in 2012. Australians like to use the suffix "ie," such as barbie for barbecue and tinnie for a can of beer ("Oxford Dictionaries," CNSNews, Nov. 19, 2013). The word "selfie" is definitely a reflection of the mood of the times. In fact, it is a fulfillment of the following Bible prophecy. "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy" (2 Timothy 3:1-2). The first characteristic of the end-time apostasy described here is that men shall be "lovers of their own selves." There has never been a better description of the modern pop culture that has captivated the world through the facility of modern communications technology. The Time magazine "Person of the Year" for 2006 was "YOU." The magazine cover featured a sheet of Mylar to reflect the reader's own face. It is the age of MySpace, my music, my tweets, my fashion, my generation, my attitude, my selfie. The pop culture is all about me, and it is a dramatic fulfillment of Bible prophecy and a dramatic sign of the end times. (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Luke 19:40 “And He answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” How long does it take to make a fossil? Most people think that it takes a long time, and that’s partly because we have been repeatedly told that fossils are millions of years old. But experience – which is, after all, what science is all about – shows that it is not unusual for things to become stone very quickly under the proper conditions. The process of fossilization, where minerals replace the original material, is illustrated very nicely by a miner’s hat. A miner lost his hat in a mine in Australia; it was found 50 years later, completely turned to limestone. The hat is now in a mining museum in Tasmania. Even more dramatic is the bowler hat that was buried in a volcanic eruption in 1886 in New Zealand. When it was excavated – only 20 years later – it had been completely turned to stone. Just think for a moment, if these were not modern artifacts but, say, a fish, they might have been declared to be millions of years old! Many, if not most, fossils were produced during the great flood of Noah’s time when plants and animals were quickly covered by sediment and water. They bear witness to God’s judgment of sin. And those fossil hats put into question the idea that we are the product of millions of years of evolution! Notes: John Mackay. “Fossil Bolts and Fossil Hats.” Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol. 8, Nov., p. 10. Photo: Fossilized miner’s hat on display at a mining museum on Tasmania's west coast. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com New York Train back on tracks; Obama unveils $100 million HIV research initiative; Cyber Monday sales well ahead of last year; Amazon Drone delivery. |
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