Job 26:9 “He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it.” The Moon is the only object in the night sky whose surface features can be studied from the Earth without the need for a telescope. One might think that a Full Moon would be the best time to observe, but, in fact, the brightness and glare make it difficult to make out all the features. Crescents and half-moons are better, and many images of the lunar surface seen in books and on the internet are actually composites of two half-moons, rather than a full moon shot. The most obvious feature of the Moon’s earthward-facing side are the large gray areas known as maria. This is the Latin word for seas, and at one time, it was thought that these could actually be water-filled seas. We now know that they are gray plains which scatter less incident sunlight than the mountains and craters, and, hence, appear darker. They appear to be volcanic in origin, having been formed by basaltic flows. Evolutionary astronomers believe that these lava flows happened hundreds of millions of years after a period of intense bombardment; yet, that bombardment caused the lava flows. Their problem is the existence of ghost craters – craters filled in by mare formation, but still visible in outline. Yet, they believe this cratering took place over a long period of time. In short, the formation of the Moon’s maria is much more consistent with the biblical account of the Moon’s creation on the Fourth Day. creationmoments.com/sermons/seas-on-the-moon “We’re experiencing a burst in popularity of tarot cards. The New York Times in 2017 celebrated ‘Tarot is Trending.’ The Guardian promoted it as a form of therapy in 2018. One writer said she counted 550 tarot apps in the Apple Store before giving up. An Amazon search of ‘tarot cards’ renders 10,000 results. Before giving my life fully to Christ, I was a tarot card fanboy. I loved having readings. I bought about half a dozen different decks. I had a shelf full of books. I studied tarot cards harder than I’d studied any subject in school. That gets us to tarot’s dirty little secret. First, you learn the basic meaning of each card. Then you learn each card’s alternative meanings. Then you learn that the meaning, positive or negative, depends on whether the card is right side up or upside down. And then you learn that the meaning also depends on its relative position to the cards next to it. In other words, a ‘negative’ card in the past can actually be ‘good’ if the card next to it indicates a change for the better. And vice versa. Wait, there’s more. Then you learn that an isolated part of imagery itself might contain a meaning tucked within it. Take the card commonly called ‘The Chariot.’ See the wheels? In a specific reading, the Chariot itself could have to do with your car. Could have to do with travel. If the card is upside down, it could mean beware the wheels coming off a project or relationship. The black and white sphinx-like creatures? Could refer to an issue that is clear black-and-white. The red symbol between them that looks like a top could mean that even though the choice is black and white, your head is spinning like a top trying to decide the issue. It could also refer to the unity of different things — both sphinxes, just different colors. Even though the decision seems black and white, it really isn’t. Are you getting the idea? If not, let me put it to you very simply. Any card at any time can mean anything. And if something can mean anything, it means nothing. Even if the cards could tell you something about the future, they don’t give you the power to change the future. This is why we must hold to the God who made Himself known. ‘Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths’ (Proverbs 3:5-6).” “Tarot Card Resurgence,” Al Perrotta, The Stream, Oct. 28, 2019 Psalm 89:36-37 “His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. Selah.” Strictly speaking, the Moon does not orbit the Earth. Let me explain. The Moon is actually a large body compared to the Earth. It is the fifth largest natural satellite in the Solar System. Only three moons of Jupiter (Ganymede, Callisto and Io) and one moon of Saturn (Titan) are larger. In fact, it is the 14th largest object in the Solar System. Its volume is 2% that of the Earth, and its mass 1%. So it is a very significant size compared to the Earth. That means that the Moon doesn’t really orbit the Earth. Both Earth and Moon orbit a common center of gravity. However, that center of gravity is within the surface of the Earth. This large size for the Moon, compared to its host planet, means that Earth and Moon affect each other greatly. The Earth’s gravitational pull on the Moon is such that it maintains a synchronous orbit, where its rotation on its axis occurs at the same rate as its orbital period. The practical result of this is that one side of the Moon is constantly facing the Earth, while the other constantly faces away. The Moon’s gravity affects the Earth by pulling somewhat on the oceans, causing a bulge, which is what gives us our tides. These tidal forces also operate on the land but are not so noticeable. God made the Moon special and caused it to be the faithful witness in the sky, “dying” for three days, then rising again. creationmoments.com/sermons/earth-and-moon I received the following question from a reader: “Our children have been receiving coloring books and coloring pages from relatives and friends at church which we’re not sure about. Some have told us they’re great for relieving headaches and just fun to do. Abeka has also put coloring pages with this type of theme in the 3rd grade Arithmetic Test books. They used to have an animal or some cute picture to color after speed drills were completed, but now they’ve switched to these objects and patterns. We started researching these types of coloring books and are alarmed to see the association with meditation and Buddhism. While the pages themselves may or may not be evil, they definitely lead down a wrong path. We’ve discarded any books or pages. Because of your location and knowledge of cultures in the east, we were wondering if you know any details about these coloring pages.” REPLY FROM BROTHER CLOUD: This is the first I have heard about coloring books using mandalas, but the mandala is strictly pagan in origin and purpose. They are used in Hinduism and Buddhism, and especially in Tibetan Buddhism, which is highly occultic. Tibetan Buddhism uses mandalas (circle) as symbols of the enlightened mind (nirvana) and the path to it. (In Hinduism, yantra is a similar concept.) There are endless forms and interpretations. “The mandala represents in visual form the core essence of the Vajrayana teachings.” One popular mandala is the Five Buddhas, representing the various paths to enlightenment. The mandala is a meditation tool. The practitioner meditates “to the point of saturation, such that the image of the mandala becomes fully internalised in even the minutest detail and can then be summoned and contemplated at will as a clear and vivid visualized image.” “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:17-18). Friday Church News Notes, December 6, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) 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.” One of the most significant differences between the true account of creation in Genesis and the various myths of the Ancient Near East is that those myths give great prominence to the Sun and the Moon. In many cases, these are supposed to be god-consorts; the Sun being the male god and the Moon his wife, though in some legends, it is the other way around. The Bible’s actual history, however, emphasizes that the Sun and Moon were both created objects, and that God did not even create them until the Fourth Day. If that was not enough humiliation for these pretender gods, Genesis does not even refer to them by name! It simply calls them the Greater Light (to rule the day) and the Lesser Light (to rule the night). It is clear why the Greater Light is set to rule the day. The daytime is defined by the Sun, even though we know, of course, that God caused the first three days to happen without the Sun being in existence. But it is intriguing to think of the Moon ruling the night. For a start, some might object that the Moon is sometimes seen during the day. Not only that, but its phases mean that the amount of light during the hours of darkness varies a great deal. It turns out that many nocturnal animals need this variation, and, in particular, need the limited light provided by the Moon. God created everything just right for life on Earth. creationmoments.com/sermons/the-lesser-light "In the winter of 1906, the year San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake and SOS became the international distress signal, Britain’s Punch magazine published a dark joke about the future of technology. Under the headline, ‘Forecasts for 1907,’ a black and white cartoon showed a well-dressed Edwardian couple sitting in a London park. The man and woman are turned away from each other, antennae protruding from their hats. In their laps are little black boxes, spitting out ticker tape. A caption reads: ‘These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results.’ The cartoonist was going for broad humor, but today the image looks prophetic. A century after it was published, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Today, thanks to him, we can sit in parks and not only receive amatory messages and racing results, but summon all the world’s knowledge with a few taps of our thumbs, listen to virtually every song ever recorded and communicate instantaneously with everyone we know. More than two billion people around the world, including three-quarters of Canadians, now have this magic at their fingertips--and it’s changing the way we do countless things, from taking photos to summoning taxis. But smartphones have also changed us--changed our natures in elemental ways, reshaping the way we think and interact. For all their many conveniences, it is here, in the way they have changed not just industries or habits but people themselves, that the joke of the cartoon has started to show its dark side. The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It's there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say--and what their research shows--is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time. Ten years into the smartphone experiment, we may be reaching a tipping point. Buoyed by mounting evidence and a growing chorus of tech-world jeremiahs, smartphone users are beginning to recognize the downside of the convenient little mini-computer we keep pressed against our thigh or cradled in our palm, not to mention buzzing on our bedside table while we sleep.” “Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy,” The Globe and Mail, Apr. 10, 2018 Genesis 1:4 “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness,” At the time of writing, 2018 is ending, and we are just entering the time for commemorating the fact that half a century ago, human beings went to the Moon. On Christmas Eve 1968, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were a long way from home. They were making history by being the first people ever to be in orbit around another world. I remember clearly the stunning pictures, broadcast from close to the Moon’s surface, including photographs of the hidden side of the Moon – the side that constantly faces away from the Earth. Also etched in my memory was that sight of the famous Earthrise picture, taken as the bright disk of the Earth, so far away, rose over the Lunar horizon, and we were all transported to another place in our imaginations. Prior to Apollo 8’s launch, the astronauts had been reminded that they would be broadcasting live on Christmas Eve 1968, so they had better think of something very significant to say to a vast television audience all over the Earth! They rose magnificently to the challenge, as they took turns to read out the first ten verses of Genesis chapter 1 from notes typewritten on to special fireproof paper, reminding all those who had ears to hear that the Moon, like the Earth, was created by God, for His Glory and for His good pleasure. “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” creationmoments.com/sermons/memories-from-the-moon Following are a couple of the responses to the report in last week’s Friday Church News Notes: RESPONSE # 1 - “I am a 1977 BJU grad. I am EXTREMELY upset I am forced to realize that BJU is now a New Evangelical school, having become so without a peep from Dr. Bob Jones the third, as far as I know. Two or three years ago I checked out the website of a man who was scheduled to preach in Bible Conference. On the link for his church's youth group, one can hear hard rock music. Not wimpy ‘soft rock’ but HARD rock. No pastor treating his church kids to hard rock should even be allowed close to the BJU pulpit, much less preach from it. I complained to President Petitt, who responded with a ‘I see nothing wrong with it’ response. No surprise, since he is actually in the video. Please note on the school’s website, the link for ‘Approved Greenville Churches’ lists not only Second Presbyterian Church (PCA) but also the Southern Baptist Church directly across the street from the school, White Oak Baptist, pastored by Dr. Lonnie Polson, a member of the BJU faculty and Dept. Head. I predict after the death of 80-year-old Bob Jones III, they will change the name of the school.” RESPONSE # 2 - “Bob Jones has been hemorrhaging students over the past 20 years. They have basically lost their independent Baptist constituency. IBC pastors are nervous not only about their position on the Bible, but also their growing affinity to reformed/covenant theology. Northland went down a similar route. (They were known as the BJ of the Midwest in their heyday.) So now BJ is reaching out to their Presbyterian friends to try and rebuild the school. I doubt if that will work. The Presbyterians have their own network of colleges. But when colleges lose constituencies, their enrollment drops. When that happens, their finances drop. When that happens, they begin to make desperate moves to stay afloat. We are witnessing that at Bob Jones as we speak. I watched the same thing at Northland and Pillsbury, not to mention Tennessee Temple University, Clearwater, and Calvary Seminary. Other places like Central Seminary and Detroit Seminary are barely hanging on and are now more evangelical than fundamentalist. (Incidentally all of these places have been a part of the Bob Jones Network, not to mention groups like the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship. But the common thread in all these places has been the embrace of scholarship--one of the tenets of New Evangelicalism--which has led them to embrace critical-text Bibles and then flirting with reformed theology and CCM. They either all have failed or are in the process of failing including the FBF. Of course, true focus on evangelism fades inversely as elitist scholarship attitudes increase. How sad!” (Friday Church News Notes, December 6, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork”. As with many astronomical topics, we have discussed dark matter before in these Creation Moments. Big Bang Believers have a mass problem. There is not enough observed mass in the universe to account for many observations. Therefore, many Big Bang Believers suggest that the universe must be filled with dark matter. This form of matter, which must constitute the overwhelming majority of the universe’s mass, does not interact with anything else in the universe; hence, it cannot be seen. It should, at this point, be emphasized that not all secular cosmogonists believe in the existence of dark matter. Indeed, not even all Big Bang Believers accept it. A recent report published by the Royal Astronomical Society refers to star clusters, whose appearance they interpret as showing evidence for dark matter. “We have found a way to ‘see’ dark matter,” says the report’s lead author. “We have found that very faint light in galaxy clusters, the intracluster light, maps how dark matter is distributed.” It needs to be emphasized over and over again that astronomers have not seen dark matter, nor have they seen the formation of stars. They have observed interesting phenomena which they interpret as dark matter. John Hartnett, a creationist cosmologist, explains that the concept of dark matter prevents, rather than aids, explanation of cosmology because it is believed to constitute the overwhelming majority of the universe. “Even if we should come up with a theory that perfectly explained what we do see, we have not explained the universe.” creationmoments.com/sermons/seeing-dark-matter Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” We have discussed in previous Creation Moments how those who believe in the Big Bang Theory (let’s call them Big Bang Believers) have a sophisticated model of star formation into which they plug a number of interesting observations which could easily be interpreted in another way. For example, they would claim that certain gas molecule clouds, such as the Eagle Nebula, which contain small, bright stars, are, in fact, nurseries where stars are born. They then make the claim that they have observational evidence for the birth of stars, but this is, logically, a circular argument. The observed nebula is interpreted as the birth of stars only because it is interpreted according to their Big Bang Belief. The nebula cannot then be offered up as evidential proof for the very theory which is used to interpret it. In a similar manner, Big Bang Believers have a theory of planetary formation. In most cases, they assume that a cloud of gas and dust orbits the newly formed star and that, following a disturbance by something such as another star passing by, clumps of rock begin to aggregate under gravity until planet-sized lumps are formed. One cloud of gas was recently reported as emanating from an observed star 685 light years away. The star has an evolutionary age of 2 million years. But what was actually observed is a large stellar flare. A Big Bang interpretation does not constitute proof and cannot undermine the Scriptural position that God made such objects on Day Four. creationmoments.com/sermons/do-baby-planets-exist Massively influential rapper Kanye West has professed a Christian conversion experience and is now preaching Jesus. West was a terrible blasphemer. He appeared as a thorn-crowned Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2006. His 2013 album was titled Yeezus, which is a play on West’s nickname Yeezy and the name Jesus. The cover art depicted West being crowned king by angels. In the song “I Am a God,” he raps, “I just talked to Jesus, and he said, ‘What up, Yeezus?” We would hope that this man has indeed been born again, but as a spiritual babe, at best, he has made a great error by keeping himself in the limelight and conducting church services. When he considered giving up hip hop because “that’s the devil’s music,” he was given the very bad advice by his pastor, Adam Tyson, that “you can rap about God.” At a recent concert with Kendrick Lamar, Kanye had a conversation with a man dressed up as Jesus. West said, “Jesus, I’m so sorry. I’ve been such a bad man.” The Jesus figure replies, “Kanye, don’t you know I didn’t come here to make bad men good. I came here to make dead men alive.” That is half-truth, and half-truths are extremely dangerous. While making bad men good is not the way of Christ’s salvation, making bad men good is most definitely the objective of salvation. The way of salvation is to receive the free gift of God’s grace without works, but the free salvation thus received produces good works. Ephesians 2:8-10 clarifies this common error in simple, clear, and precise language. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, CREATED IN CHRIST JESUS UNTO GOOD WORKS, WHICH GOD HATH BEFORE ORDAINED THAT WE SHOULD WALK IN THEM.” The present era is characterized by heaps of teachers who confuse the grace of God with moral license. It is a fulfillment of the prophecy of 2 Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” The apostle Paul defined the true grace of God as follows: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; WHO GAVE HIMSELF FOR US, THAT HE MIGHT REDEEM US FROM ALL INIQUITY, AND PURIFY UNTO HIMSELF A PECULIAR PEOPLE, ZEALOUS OF GOOD WORKS” (Titus 2:11-15). Kanye would do well to heed Paul’s divinely-inspired teaching and reject every voice that speaks contrary to it. (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” Big Bang Believers have an entire story about the life cycle of stars. It is a sophisticated story, as it has to encompass stars of many different types and lots of observed phenomena. However, its sophistication does not authenticate every element of it. One of the consequences of this belief is the observation of so-called star nurseries. This leads to the claim that we can see stars forming in clouds of molecules or nebulae. After all, the model for star formation that Big Bang Believers use is that something disturbs the constituent parts of a molecular cloud so that molecules stick together in clumps. These clumps are said to act on each other by gravity, growing bigger and bigger, while the center gets hotter and hotter, until hydrogen atoms at the center begin to undergo nuclear fusion, and the star switches on! It must be emphasized over and over again that this has not been observed to happen. Again, this has not been observed to happen. What is actually observed is the molecular cloud with small stars inside it, so the observation is assumed to be part of the story. One website suggested that the necessary disturbance could be caused by a comet passing through the nebula. But such a passage by a comet has not been observed. God has certainly made an active universe in which there are changes that can be observed or inferred. But these things declare His glory, not random, deep-time chance. creationmoments.com/sermons/do-baby-stars-exist In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Keith Getty gave a strong warning about the “modern worship movement.” He called it “a movement for cultural relevance,” “a de-christianizing of God’s people,” and “utterly dangerous.” He said, “This idea that Christianity is cool or easy is not biblical. It’s a misnomer for our generation. An authentic generation doesn’t begin with catharsis; it has to begin with an authentic picture of the God of the Bible” (“Keith Getty: Modern worship mov’t is ‘utterly dangerous,’” The Christian Post, Nov. 9, 2019). We agree with this 100%, as far as it goes, but it is an ineffectual warning. It is ineffectual, for one thing, because it is spoken in generalities. Is Keith Getty talking about Bethel Church? Calvary Chapel? Casting Crowns? Steven Curtis Chapman? Christ for the Nations? Delirious? Kirk Franklin? Gateway Worship? Hillsong? Hosanna? Integrity? International House of Prayer? Maranatha? MercyMe? Newsboys? Michael W. Smith? Vineyard? Worship Central? The answer is, No one knows. In typical New Evangelical fashion, Getty’s strong-sounding warning is too vague to be effective. But then, to sound clear warnings would narrow a big tent ministry. Keith Getty’s warning is also ineffectual because of his radical ecumenism. He says this generation needs “an authentic picture of the God of the Bible,” but how does his friend Matt Maher give such a picture by believing in transubstantiation and praying to Mary the Queen of Heaven? How does Getty’s oft-quoted hero C.S. Lewis give such a picture by his rejection of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and eternal judgment? This list could be expanded greatly. Keith Getty’s warning is also ineffectual because of his eclectic, “use any music you please,” approach to music. He says, “Part of our campaign is to get our generation to know the great hymns of the faith.” That sounds commendable, but the Gettys have jazzed up the great hymns with a modern sound that doesn’t match the message of the words. Their concerts, even their Christmas concerts, such as Sing! An Irish Christmas, are out-and-out rock & roll fests with a pounding back beat and Irish dance music. It is sensual entertainment. It is highly emotional, but not holy. What do darkened auditoriums and floodlights and stage musicians and female worship leaders and big screen monitors and Christmas trees and Irish dancers and pounding drums have to do with the worship of a thrice holy God? I can’t imagine David putting on such a performance at the Tabernacle or Solomon at the First Temple or Nehemiah at the Second Temple or Paul at the church at Ephesus. (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Genesis 7:20-21 “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 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:” Some of the most fascinating fossils are those of insects and other creatures trapped in amber. The creatures are often well-preserved and look as if they have been trapped quickly. One recent science article reported on a find in Lebanon of insects trapped in the process of hatching out from their eggs. The insects, which appear to be like modern green lacewings, show every indication of being newly hatched, by a number of anatomical features. Dr. Michael S. Engel, one of the study’s authors, said, “The process of hatching is ephemeral, and the structures that make it possible tend to disappear quickly once egg-laying animals hatch, so obtaining fossil evidence of them is truly exceptional.” Also, their jaws had not fully interlocked – a process that happens very soon in newly hatched nymphs. Although the evolutionary scientists reporting the find acknowledge the sudden death of the insects and their entrapment in the amber, they believe the whole fossil to be 130 million years old. Yet, amber, which is formed by the polymerization of the sticky wood resin which has trapped the insects, degrades quickly in the open. So the amber itself must have been buried rapidly in sediment, suggesting a catastrophic formation. Amber fossils, therefore, shed light on creatures of the pre-Flood world, not that of mythical deep time. It is interesting that evolutionist researchers do not carry out carbon dating on amber fossils, no doubt concerned that a carbon date would be consistent with a biblical age. creationmoments.com/sermons/amber-light-on-pre-flood-world A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks, depicts the life of Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister who was famous for the children’s television program Mr. Rogers. He was “Mr. Nice” personified. He was always positive. He never condemned or offended anyone. He never called anyone a sinner, never commanded anyone to repent or perish, never warned of destruction. He had his own code of personal morality, but he didn’t judge anyone else’s. His most famous line was “Won’t you be my neighbor?” In fact, he didn’t even mention God on his program. Even The Daily Beast, an ultra-liberal, leftist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual rights, pro-socialist news site, praises Mr. Rogers for his “niceness” in the report “Finally, Something Nice: Tom Hanks Playing Mr. Rogers May Save Us All” (Nov. 18, 2019). But the reason why Mr. Rogers’ Christianity appealed even to some atheists is that it was false. The true Jesus is far more loving than Mr. Rogers’ Jesus and also far more holy and just and righteous. The true Jesus is love incarnate, but He is not Mr. Nice by man’s standards. The true Jesus doesn’t smile at sin or overlook sin. He suffered and died for sin to make the atonement required by God’s holy law for sinners to be saved. He doesn’t offer “universal” salvation or preach the Fatherhood of God. He says, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and He repeated it for emphasis (John 3:3, 7). The true Jesus isn’t all-positive, all-accepting. He said, “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” and He repeated it for emphasis (Luke 13:3, 5). The true Jesus doesn’t preach heaven for all. He said, “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched” and He repeated it five times for emphasis (Mark 9:43, 44, 45, 46, 48). The true Jesus called men evil (Luke 11:13). The true Jesus called some men fools and blind, full of hypocrisy and iniquity, serpents, generation of vipers (Matthew 23:13-33). This generation is in love with a false christ. It is the Hillsong christ, the Joel Osteen smiley-face christ. But it is an idol that is not real and cannot save and will be an eternal disappointment. (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Psalm 104:24 “O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.” There are many and various animals in the world, and some of them can be very unusual. Perhaps one of the strangest is the coconut crab (Birgus latro). Despite its name, it rarely eats coconuts. But the fact that it possesses such a name is one of the odd things about it. It is a land crab. Of course, there are a number of species of land crabs around the world, but to those of us in the western world, the land still seems an unusual environment for a type of animal that we expect to see in the sea. Coconut crabs are huge. They are the largest land-dwelling arthropods, and they look very intimidating. Their bodies are about 16 inches across, and their leg span can be up to 3 feet. Their huge claws can cause considerable pain, and they don’t seem to like to let go! And they live primarily on land, usually in burrows, though they can climb trees. This gives the crab its alternative name of “robber crab”, because they will steal coconuts from the palms. Were these animals made like this, or did God create crabs with sufficient adaptability for some of them to live on land? Evolutionists suppose that all crustaceans, like crabs, have a common ancestor. Yet, the fossil record does not show this. Nor is it possible to postulate one for such a wide variety of types. God, in His creativity, has made so many wonderful sorts of animals. creationmoments.com/sermons/of-crabs-and-coconuts Since 2006, we have documented the move toward Reformed Calvinism on the part of many BJU graduates, but it wasn’t clear where the school itself stood. That picture has now come into clear focus, and it is worse than we suspected. In October, BJU president Steve Pettit participated in the “Greenville Conference on Reformed Theology” at Second Presbyterian Church. The other two speakers were Joel Beeke and Richard Phillips. Beeke is a professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and Phillips serves on the board of The Gospel Coalition. On November 11-12, Andy Naselli was the guest speaker at BJU for the Stewart Custer Lecture Series. Naselli is a professor at John Piper’s Bethlehem College & Seminary and an elder of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Naselli is also on the staff of The Gospel Coalition. It is becoming more clear why Bob Jones University is building bridges to Keith Getty, who is a Reformed Calvinist and whose pastor, Alistair Beggs, is a prominent member of The Gospel Coalition. TGC represents the new Reformed Calvinism. Unlike old Reformed Calvinism, new Reformed Calvinism is ecumenical. The old Reformed men believed that Rome is the great whore of Revelation 17, drunken with the blood of the martyrs, but the new Reformed have ecumenical relationships with Rome, or at least are sympathetic to it. On the TGC web page “Should Christians Be Ecumenical,” we find the following: “Can evangelicals and Catholics truly be together? Jesus’ prayer for unity in the Body obligates me to see the ecumenical task as important for Christianity” (by Trevin Wax, a Southern Baptist Wheaton College professor who associates with the Gettys). This is false. Jesus’ prayer in John 17 has nothing to do with ecumenism. In fact, Christ emphasized obedience to God’s Word and the importance of truth (Joh. 17:6, 8, 14, 17, 19), which are incompatible with ecumenism. Lou Martuneac makes the following observation, “What has BJU president Steve Pettit shown us by taking an active role in this conference, with these speakers? First, he has removed any lingering doubt of having led the University to embrace Reformed Theology. Second, The Gospel Coalition (TGC) includes men in its leadership who are some of the most egregious of ecumenical compromisers among the so-called ‘conservative’ evangelicals. To any objective observer surely enough has been seen to erase any lingering doubt that BJU has abandoned its foundational, separatist principles. The University has always been theologically broad. So--that’s not new. What is new is the association with compromised denominations that have never espoused fundamentalism” (“This Is Not Your Father’s Bob Jones University, A Continuation,” In Defense of the Gospel, Nov. 14, 2019). (Friday Church News Notes, November 29, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Psalm 8:8 “The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.” Every so often, as we like to report in these Creation Moments, evolutionists find that their own discoveries and their own presuppositions cause them to have to rewrite and rethink huge areas of evolutionary theory. One such area is the supposed evolutionary development of feathers. Feathers are marvelous examples of design. We have commented before about the impossibility of the evolution of feathers in birds. While recognizing some of the problems inherent in alleged feather development, evolutionists have simply pushed back feather development on to therapod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus, supposedly 180 million years ago. Now, scientists at the University of Bristol, have investigated the little hairs, or pycnofibres, on pterosaurs, and determined that they think these are feathers. Previously, evolutionists had not thought that pterosaurs were related to therapods, so they now have to write a whole new section of evolution, based on the supposed origin of feathers, pushing back the evolutionary date for feathers to 250 million years ago. There are so many issues to pick holes with here. Remember that the dating of these creatures relies on the dates of fossils, which are not, contrary to popular opinion, dated by any radiometric method, and certainly not by carbon dating. They are dated using circular reasoning where the dates of rocks and fossils are guesstimated from each other. Creationists would not have any problem with finding out that creatures other than birds had feathers. We still point to the impossibility of the evolution of these marvelous objects. creationmoments.com/sermons/pterosaur-feathers Metropolitan Tabernacle of London, England, during Charles Spurgeon’s pastorate (1854-1882) is an example of a praying church. The preaching was effectual and the church was aggressive in evangelism (e.g., street preaching, aggressive tract distribution, 27 Sunday Schools ministering to over 8,000 children with 612 teachers). Thousands were saved with changed lives as evidence, and Spurgeon attributed this largely to prayer. “Spurgeon regarded the prayer meeting as ‘the most important meeting of the week.’ He often said that it was not surprising if churches did not prosper, when they regarded the prayer meeting as of so little value that one evening in the week was made to suffice for a feeble combination of service and prayer meeting. A.T. Pierson, who ministered at the Tabernacle during Spurgeon’s last illness, said, ‘This Metropolitan Tabernacle is a house of prayer most emphatically prayer is almost ceaselessly going up. When one meeting is not in progress, another is. There are prayer meetings before preaching, and others after preaching. No marvel that Mr. Spurgeon’s preaching has been so blessed. He himself attributes it mainly to the prevailing prayers of his people’” (Wonders of Grace: Original testimonies of converts during Spurgeon’s early years, p. 14). Spurgeon warned about the prayerlessness that characterized many of the Baptist churches of his day. He attributed the “downgrade” in doctrine in the Baptist Union to the weak spiritual condition of the churches. He wrote, “Are churches in a right condition when they have only one meeting for prayer in a week, and that a mere skeleton? Churches which have prayer-meetings several times on the Lord’s-day, and very frequently during the week, yet feel their need of more prayer; but what can be said of those who very seldom practice united supplication? Are there few conversions? Do the congregations dwindle? Who wonders that this is the case when the spirit of prayer has departed?” (The Sword and the Trowel, Aug. 1887). (Friday Church News Notes, November 22, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” There have been some truly magnificent musical works composed over the centuries. The great Baroque Oratorios are among my favorite, combining recitatives – “sung as spoken” narration, alternating with choruses of tremendous power. The composers Bach and Handel were the masters of this form of church music. The Austrian composer, Joseph Haydn, really belongs to the later Classical, rather than Baroque, era of art music, but during concert tours of England in the 1790s, he was much impressed by Handel’s oratorios Israel in Egypt and, of course, The Messiah, and wanted to write a major oratorio of his own. He was handed a lengthy poem, detailing the creation of the world, which Handel had not got round to working on. Haydn decided he would do it, so he got his librettist, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, to adapt the poem, which drew on the words of Genesis, Psalms, and John Milton’s classic Paradise Lost. Uniquely, the libretto was developed in both German and English, so is equally at home being performed in either language. A performance of The Creation is a massive undertaking, however, with large choir and orchestra, and powerful solo sections. The oratorio was first performed in Vienna in 1799. The work reflects the composer’s own faith. The dying Haydn was carried into his last performance, in 1808, at which the audience erupted in spontaneous applause. Haydn pointed weakly upward. “Not from me—everything comes from up there!” And Haydn’s Creation remains a supreme act of worship to our God and Creator. creationmoments.com/sermons/haydns-creation “For years, scientists have been puzzled by the discrepancy between the released and measured ocean plastic. More than 98% goes missing every year, causing researchers to wonder where it goes. A new study may have an answer: It is dissolved by the sun. Scientists from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, East China Normal University, and Northeastern University conducted a lab experiment to study how plastic responds to direct sunlight while floating in ocean water. Published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, the study exposed various plastic polymers commonly found in ocean garbage to simulated sunlight while immersed in ocean water for two months. It observed degradation and dissolution at a far higher rate than anyone previously thought possible. The consensus has been that plastic survives in nature for thousands of years. This study showed that, when exposed to sunlight, the half-life--the time it takes for half of the material to disappear--of common types of plastic was reduced to only 2.7 years. The most robust plastic had an estimated half-life of 49 years, which is still orders of magnitude faster than previously believed. In the West, news of sea creatures trapped in plastic typically is met with more demands to ban plastic straws. This is a classic example of narcissistic altruism, the misplaced belief that anything wrong in the world is to be blamed on America. Yet 95% of the plastic garbage in the ocean comes from only ten rivers in the world, most of them in Asia, and all of them in the Third World. According to The Wall Street Journal, China alone accounts for 8.8 million tons annually, whereas America releases only 0.3 million tons. The United States accounts for only about 1% of the combined world pollution. Until now, Third World countries have been given a free pass by the West. They get to produce as much CO2 as they want, cheat on intellectual property, subsidize their national industry while tolling and strictly regulating foreign competitors, treat their workers in a way that would never be allowed in the West, and release most of the garbage that pollutes the world’s oceans to the detriment of all. The main culprit is China.” “Ocean Plastics” Liberty Nation, Nov. 14, 2019 Job 30:29 “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.” We do not have many artifacts in the Mount St Helens Creation Center, as we consider ourselves more of a visitors’ center than a museum. But, over the years, we have acquired one or two interesting pieces. One of them is a fossilized egg, and I have been reliably informed that it is the egg of a hadrosaurus. The hadrosaurus was one of the earliest and most famous fossil discoveries of the 19th Century. Having seen some large bones, dug up by someone twenty years previously, the discoverer dug up a nearly complete skeleton in 1858, in a woodland site in New Jersey. The dinosaur was subsequently named Hadrosaurus foulkii, for its discoverer. It was thought to be a dinosaur, similar to iguanadon. It was ten years before the skeleton was assembled for display. The sculptor who assembled the skeleton was the British naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Foulke had contacted the paleontologist Joseph Leidy, who decided that the dinosaur must have walked on two legs, which is interesting, because Hawkins had previously built a model iguanadon at the Crystal Palace dinosaur park in London, England, showing the iguanadon on all fours, like a lizard. Today, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences houses the dinosaur, and many other fossil hadrosaurs have been discovered, making it, and its eggs, some of the most popular fossils around. Hadrosaurs were beautiful creatures, made by God on Day Six of creation week, along with the other land animals. creationmoments.com/sermons/an-egg-that-wont-hatch “When you think the big corporate push for a sexual revolution couldn’t get any worse, think again. The LGBTQ mafia which is controlled by the corporate elites has continued to stay on the bleeding edge of sexual immorality and Sprite is at the front of the line. Sprite recently released a commercial in Argentina depicting a teenage boy bundling up and transitioning into a girl. The commercial shows graphic images of the child’s body while he changes into girl’s clothes, puts on a wig, and paints himself up. Ten years ago, this commercial would have sparked outrage across the world and would not have been allowed, but now, this is celebrated like it’s the greatest thing to happen to the world since sliced bread. It is clearly an indication that the world is being given over to sin and under the judgment of God.” “Sprite Puts Out Disgusting Commercial,” ReformationCharlotte.com, Nov. 15, 2019 Psalm 136:9 “The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.” It is raining ice particles on the surface of Saturn, and the source of that rain is the planet’s unusual ring system. Saturn is so spectacular, that we have to revisit it time and time again, even though we have talked about it before in previous Creation Moments. When I first saw telescope images of Saturn, as a boy, I was open-mouthed. Modern exploration, including spacecraft, has only served to increase our surprise and delight at the planet, with its magnificent, highly photogenic ring system. Voyager I, launched in 1977, and flying by Saturn in 1980, hinted at the concept of ring rain. More recent NASA observations have confirmed that particles of ice from the rings are being pulled by gravity into the planet. The rate at which this is happening suggests that Saturn’s rings are slowly disappearing. If the current rates continue, Saturn’s rings could disappear in 100 million years! “This is relatively short, compared to Saturn’s age of over 4 billion years,” says James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The calculations are accurate, but are based on the idea that this ring rain has always happened at a constant rate, and will always continue at that same rate. This is a principle that makes no sense, when we observe that the Bible’s timescale of about 6,000 years is much less. I cannot say why this process is happening, but I see no reason why God would end the tour of duty of Saturn’s rings. creationmoments.com/sermons/saturn-and-its-ring-rain Colonial Hills Baptist Church of Indianapolis, Indiana, has announced “Worship Conference 2020: A Traditional Look at Contemporary Music” to be held in January. Speakers include Seth Custer and Greg Steikes of Bob Jones University, Adam Morgan of Majesty Music, Mark Herbster of Maranatha Baptist University, and Tim Fisher of Sacred Music Services. It is described as “a contemporary look at traditional worship.” The problem is that Bob Jones and Majesty Music have capitulated to using Getty Townend Music (GTM) in their hymnals, so they are facing two ways. They have changed their former stand of accepting no contemporary Christian music to one of accepting some contemporary Christian music. This is a major turning point if there is such a thing as a slippery slope in this issue, and there most definitely is such a thing. Getty-Townend are out-and-out contemporary rockers with no boundaries either in musical styles or associations. Townend is a “gibberish tongues-speaking, prophecies are for today, apostles are among us, kingdom now” charismatic. The Gettys partner with Roman Catholics such as Matt Maher, Margaret Becker, and Máire Brennan. GTM is a bridge to the one world church as surely as Hillsong. We have documented this extensively in the report “The Gettys - Pied Pipers of Contemporary Worship Music.” Men who are defending the use of contemporary praise music to any degree instead of warning against it without equivocation will answer to God for the souls that cross the bridges they are building to the dangerous world that is represented by this music. In the Internet age, to recommend some select GTM songs is, in effect, to point people to Stuart Townend and the Gettys online and to their influence. I hope to hear in January that Worship Conference 2020 publicly renounces the use of Getty-Townend Music, repents of any former support for this music, and that GTM will be removed entirely from future editions of hymnbooks published by Majesty Music and Bob Jones University. (Friday Church News Notes, November 22, 2019, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) |
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