Invited by a dead Muslim saint, or the Son of the Living God?

The music booms over the loudspeakers calling everyone to worship and prayer. The fragrances of jasmine and incense linger in the air as the women make their offerings at the darghas, the shrines of the Muslim saints. In South Asia, women regularly gather together to pray at these sites, which has provided some exciting opportunities for Christar missionaries Jodi* and Louise* to share the gospel. "Women love to chit chat, so given the choice of saying a rote prayer or talking to white ladies, the choice is obvious," said Jodi.

Moira* is just one of the women Jodi and Louise have reached out to at a dargah. She invited them back to her home, where they were able to share with her and where Moira explained that she goes to the tombs when the saints invite her. Jodi then told her about another invitation. She opened a Bible in Moira's language and read John 1:12 to her: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." Only this time, the invitation was not to worship a dead saint, but to become a child of the living God.

(from Christar "Light to the Least Reached" prayer bulletin, May 2011)

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How did Fish Survive the Tsunamis of Noah's Global Flood?

A question many people have about the Flood is how did both freshwater and saltwater fish survive? The Flood certainly involved tectonically induced tsunamis that traveled at great speeds and pummeled the land with towering walls of water, and fish are very sensitive to shock.



Fish Fossil, left over from the Flood.

 Obviously, fish weren’t taken on board the Ark. So how did they survive? As a matter of fact, most of them didn’t. Over 95 percent of all fossils are marine creatures. They died and are fossilized by the trillions. Many are buried in great fossil graveyards, tightly packed together, choked with sediments, buried before they had time to decay. Obviously, they didn’t live in the environment in which they died. They were transported by rapidly moving water and then buried in sedimentary deposits. But how could any at all have survived?

In the complex of events and conditions that made up the Flood, certainly there were pockets of fresh water at any one time. Remember, it was raining in torrents, and we can expect that the rain water was fairly fresh. Many studies have shown that waters of various temperatures, chemistries, and sediment loads do not tend to mix; they tend to remain segregated in zones. It would be unlikely for any one area to retain such zones for very long during the tumult of the Flood, but on a worldwide scale, some such segregated zones would have existed at any given time.

There is also the possibility that great amounts of vegetation were dislodged from the pre-Flood continents and remained intertwined as floating mats during the Flood. Many creationists feel that the decay and abrasion of these mats are responsible for our major coal seams, but underneath these mats the turbulence of the surface waters would have been lessened. Perhaps many fish found shelter and nutrition under them, as insects may have on the mats themselves.

We can see that there is at least a plausible answer that can be proposed to such questions. There is no reason for Christians to doubt the truth of the great Flood.

(excerpted from John D. Morris, Fish in the Flood, Acts & Facts May 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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Muslims turning to Jesus in the Algerian Sahara

Muslims in Algeria first started turning to Christ 25 years ago in the region of Tizi Ouzou. Today there are more than 100,000 Protestant Christians who live in this area, which is also home to the indigenous ethnic group known as the Kabyle (ka-bee-li). 

More than 900 miles away from Tizi Ouzou, the Sahara Desert looms large in southern Algeria. Yet "Hamid" and his wife "Imane" left the comfort of their Kabylie village to take over an abandoned church in a southern Algerian city in the Sahara.

The couple began to hold prayer meetings. At first it was just the two of them. Then three members of the nearby Catholic church, which is open only to foreigners, began to come. After the new church's third meeting, the police showed up.

"They ordered me to leave the city and said no more meetings should be had." Days later, Hamid and Imane were startled from their sleep by crashing noises. Muslims were throwing coffee cups, glasses and stones at the church door. Later, Imane and another Christian woman were assaulted by a group of teenagers in the city. About 20 teenagers appeared and began shouting at them, calling them "kafir" (unbeliever) and throwing trash at them.

"One of them took an iron rod and began beating the woman who was with me," Imane says. "I tried to defend her and they hit me too. They hit me in my arm, and as I began to run away they began throwing stones at us. I went into a shop, and the owner defended us and got a taxi for us."

Imane arrived home without serious injury, but the incident terrified her. She and her husband were in the lion's den, sharing Christ in the heart of Muslim territory. "I started thinking this was impossible," she says. "Then God told me in Acts 18:9, 'Do not be afraid, keep on speaking, do not be silent.'"

After nearly three years of restoring the church, being harassed by police, fighting off attacks by Muslim mobs and repairing vandalism, Hamid and Image were becoming very discouraged. They asked God to show them the fruit of their labor. The couple climbed up on the church's roof and kneeled to pray. "We said we need five souls for Christ," Hamid says. "We needed five Arab souls by the end of the year, ,and that would let us know that God was with us.

Just months after that prayer, a young Arab walked to the gates of the church. "I'm a Muslim," he said. "I just want to know about Christ." Within three months, five Arabs had come to Christ.

Now Hamid and Imane have a vibrant church congregation of about 40, with Bible studies, baptisms, outreach activities and discipleship training for new believers. The police no longer harass them, and the couple says the persecution they suffered helped them to bear their fruit.

"We are hoping that a strong wave of persecution comes to the Kabylie area so Christians will be pushed out from that area and come after the Arab souls," Hamid says. "We have a big vision about southern Algeria; we pray that God extends our territory more. Please pray for our protection and that the Arab believers who are with us now will be encouraged and share their faith with others."

(from Voice of the Martyrs, May 2011)

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Terrible Violence Towards Tribal Believers In Southern Mexico

Some disturbing events from late 2010, all from Mexico in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca:

* Pastor Armando Lopes is waylaid and killed as he travels back to his village after a doctor’s appointment in Comitan, Chiapas.
* Three pastors are killed in Santa Maria El Tule, Oaxaca.
* Four families of believers are expelled from the village of Chilil, Chiapas.
* The church in Llanos, Chiapas, was destroyed last June, and believers put on notice. This month, six homes are destroyed and the families expelled from the community.
* In Mitziton, Chiapas, the church and many homes are destroyed and fifty families are expelled from the community.
* In Nachug, Chiapas, 86 families are expelled.
* At the end of 2010, 498 Indian believers were living as street people, homeless in the city of San Cristobal, where they had sought protection.

“Almost all of this persecution is the result of the conflict which develops when new believers decide they can no longer go along with the rest of the villagers in their practice of drunken fiestas to saints housed in the untended Catholic church, but which have really come to represent ancient pagan gods,” he said. “The responsibility for funding the fiestas are passed around to families in the community, and the conflict begins when an evangelical family is supposed to buy the liquor but refuses to do so.

“Pray for these ‘suffering saints’, many of them very new believers! Some will eventually establish new villages and gradually build their homes again, usually after first building a new church. But the days ahead will be very hard."

Dr. Dale W. Kietzman, founder of Latin American Indian Ministries (www.laim.org), reported in Terrible Violence Towards Tribal Believers In Southern Mexico, International Press Association


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Buckled Mountains point to the Worldwide Flood of Genesis

"Throughout the mountain ranges of the world, there are enormous layers of sediment which have been bent and folded without breaking! This could only happen if these mountains were uplifted while the sedminent was of a soft, pliable, mud-like consistency" (from Censored Science, The Suppressed Evidence, p.54)

Buckled Mountains. Textbooks and museums frequently refer to some uplifting force that formed mountains. Can you see that an uplifting force, by itself, would not produce this pattern? Horizontal compression was needed to buckle these sedimentary layers near the Sullivan River in southern British Columbia, Canada. The layers must have been soft, like wet sand, at the time of compression.  Today, surface rocks are brittle.

Bruce Malone, the director of Search for the Truth Ministries, then goes on to tell the evolution "story" about the hundreds of millions of years needed to accumulate the sediment and how it would be rock hard and would break under the enormous upward pressures.

In contrast, Malone explains that the Biblical record describes a worldwide flood that resulted in a rapid accumulation of sediment that can account for the folded rock now visible!

(selected from Clifford L. Lillo, book review of Bruce A. Malone Censored Science, The Suppressed Evidence, published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Winter 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-3.htm).

Not only have sediments been bent and folded without breaking, but Scripture has not been broken either...

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The miracle that started the Turkish Church in Cologne Germany

The Turkish church of Cologne, Germany, got started after a dramatic event involving the daughter of a Turkish family...

Jesus still has power over demons!

Her parents asked a Turkish Christian brother and two others to pray for their daughter's deliverance from demons that plagued her. Not knowing how to do this, they consulted an older pastor who told them that speaking in Jesus' name gave them authority over evil spirits. When they prayed and ordered the demons to come out of the girl, they did!

As a result, many in her extended family repented and were baptized. The brother went on to organize the Turkish church of Cologne, and became its pastor. Most of these people are now very active in the church, which now has about 100 members. Many are former Muslims.

The church has recently planted a house church in another area. Please pray that the church will continue to grow and reach others for Christ.

(from a Christian prayer letter, May 2011)

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UK Prime Minister speaking out against easy tolerance to Muslims

Alarmed by Islamic militants who have made Britain an active base for terrorist plots, Prime Minister David Cameron is speaking out against the country's decades-old policy of liberal multiculturalism. He says "hands-off tolerance" has encouraged segregated communities where Islamic extremism thrives and terrorist are free to recruit young Muslims.

Pray that government leaders will take note and institute effective policies to address the situation.

(from a Christian prayer letter, May 2011)

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Churches without walls go under Cuba's radar

No new churches have been built in Cuba since the 1956 communist takeover. It requires government permission to repair churches or for a congregation to relocate to a different building.

In rare cases, authorities will allow a congregation to construct a new building on their allotted site because another church had been at the site prior to the Cuban revolution. However, they may not allow the new building to be connected to electricity.

Church leaders have complained for years about difficulties dealing with the Religious Affairs Office.

See the
Cuban Church without Walls video.

The latest way around the serpentine rules of the communist dictatorship is for congregations to build churches with roofs but no walls! See the Cuban Church without Walls video.

The Religious Affairs Office is trying to catch up with new regulations...

(Voice of the Martyrs, May 2011)

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The Football match that brought Christ to Algeria

In the 1980s, most churches in Algeria were abandoned relics left over from French colonialism, which lasted from 1830 to 1962. Algeria had become a land devoid of the gospel. To be Algerian was to be Muslim.

But in a country with no Christian bookstores, no functioning indigenous churches and virtually no access to Bibles, God made a way out of no way.

In 1983, a group of young Algerians in the mountainous Tizi Ouzou province noticed a group of tourists setting up tents. "It was a windy place and they set up the tent the wrong way; the wind blew everything over, including their tent and all their belongings", says "Hassan." "We laughed at them and then went over to help them."

Hassan and his 12 friends began talking with the foreigners, and before long the visitors challenged the Algerians to a football match.  But the Algerians told the tourists that their best football player couldn't play. He was sick in be with a fever.

"They said to us, "Well, can we see him? We'd like to pray for his healing,'" Hassan says. ."We'd never heard of that, but we thought that was fine. It couldn't hurt anything." That night, the tourists prayed, and Hassan's friend was healed. He played in the football match the next day, and after the game the group questioned the tourist about the prayer.

"We wanted to know, who was the father who healed instantly?" Hassan says. Eventually, the tourists told the group about the grace and salvation offered through faith in Jesus. Then the tourists left.

"I felt the stories they told were not just stories, but real," Hassan says. "It made me want to leave everything and follow Jesus." Hassan is quick to point out that the tourists were not missionaries. He describes the encounter with the tourists as a miracle, and the football match is widely credited with the spread of the gospel in modern Algeria.

"We cannot count the number of people that came to Christ - a lot of conversion stories, a lot of miracles," Hassan says. "We don't know how it happened, just that people came to faith and came to God."

Christianity quickly began to flourish, making it the fastest growing religion in Algeria. Then the Algerian government, pressured by hard-line Islamic nations such as Iran, decided the growth of Christianity in Algeria had to be stopped. Hassan and his friends were arrested and jailed many times.

Tizi Ouzou, about 60 miles east of the capital city of Algiers, is now the center of the Protestant movement in Algeria. Most of the 100,000 Protestant Christians live in this area.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, May 2011)



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Japan earthquake rocks the planet - but Bible prophecy expects far greater!

The release of the tension between the Pacific and North American plates due to the Japan earthquake caused a small redistribution of the earth’s mass such that its moment of inertia and figure axis (but not the spin axis) were changed slightly, increasing the rotation rate. According to an article in Science Daily,¹ this increase in rotation rate shortened the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds. Calculations show the Japan quake should have shifted the position of the earth’s figure axis by about 6.5 inches eastward.²

But the Japan earthquake is only the fifth largest since 1900. Major natural catastrophes have occurred and continue to occur on the earth. The recent events in Japan, though they were devastating, were not as large as many past catastrophes. Although the Bible speaks of cosmological and geological events occurring in the end times, the recent earthquakes and tsunamis do not match the magnitude demanded by prophecy. Nor does there appear to be an increase in the frequency of large earthquakes and other catastrophes that would lead one to believe that the last events of the end times are occurring. But even if there was an interval of increased frequency, Scripture specifically says, “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). The cosmological and geological events of the end times will be greater than anything we have experienced in our lifetime and will descend upon those still present on the earth suddenly and unexpectedly.

However, another portion of Scripture reminds us to always be ready for the Lord’s return.

But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark. (Matthew 24:37-38)

The Lord’s return will be sudden and activities will appear to be normal. However, when the Lord comes, catastrophes will occur globally and destruction will be similar in magnitude to the days of Noah, but without a global flood. We really have no concept of how sudden and massive the events of the Genesis Flood were. For example, tsunamis during the Flood were not 30 feet high as occurred during the Japan tsunami, but were likely hundreds or even thousands of feet high. Earthquakes were not 9.0 on the Richter scale, but probably 10 or higher. That means earthquakes would have produced ground motions tens of times or more greater than those that occurred in Japan. During the Japan earthquake, one small volcanic eruption occurred in southern Japan. During the Genesis Flood, literally thousands of volcanoes would have erupted, based on some 10,000 extinct volcanoes remaining on the surface of the continents and under the oceans.

For Christians who are looking forward to the Lord’s return, His coming will be a blessing. The Lord will come to take His own to spend eternity with Him before the devastation hits. I always enjoyed walking into the San Diego office of ICR founder Dr. Henry Morris and seeing the plaque on his wall that said simply, “Perhaps today.” Let’s anticipate the return of the Lord by informing as many of our friends and family as possible how to escape the judgment to come.

(excerpted from Larry Vardiman, Japan Earthquake Rocks the Planet, Acts & Facts May 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

References (selected)

1. Japan Quake May Have Slightly Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis, Theoretical Calculations Suggest. Science Daily. Posted on sciencedaily.com March 15, 2011.

2. Buis, A. Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, News and Features. Posted on jpl.nasa.gov March 14, 2011.


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The best way to pray for someone

Real intercession is when you get underneath someone else's needs so that you identify with them....

Until you identify with someone else's need, you cannot effectively pray for them!

- (Dr. Robert A. Cook, "Walk with the King today, and be a blessing!")

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Slaughter of the Dissidents, by Jerry Bergman

(reviewed by Kitty Foth-Regner)

The average Westerner is constantly reminded of the ideas put forth by people like evolutionary atheist Richard Dawkins: “One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun” (Dawkins, 2005, p. 2).

Sadly, the average Westerner is becoming convinced: “Well, then, it’s settled. All real scientists agree, after all. It must be so.” The trouble is, they never seem to hear the other side of the story. They are not informed that there are literally thousands of scientists who have publicly proclaimed their doubts about Darwinian evolution. Nor do they realize that there are many thousands more who keep their doubts under their hats—for good reason, it turns out.

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That reason is revealed in horrifying detail in Jerry Bergman’s eye-opening book, Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters. In it, Dr. Bergman describes the discrimination experienced by more than a dozen Darwin-doubting scientists, primarily in academia. And we are not talking insults at the water cooler. These men and women have been denied tenure and awards, forced out, fired, blackballed, even subjected to death threats—not because of what they did or said but because of what they believe.

Jerry Bergman.

Jerry Bergman experienced this sort of Orwellian discrimination himself in the late 1970s; he became disillusioned with Darwinism and lost his job at Bowling Green State University for saying so. Professor Dawkins would no doubt try to slap the “not a real scientist” label on him. But it would not stick, because Dr. Bergman has earned nine college degrees—two of them Ph.D.s—from the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University, The University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University.

He has spent more than 30 years teaching college-level biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology. He is currently adjunct associate professor and research associate at the Medical University of Ohio, and professor of biology and chemistry at Northwest State Community College. Dr. Bergman has 800 publications appearing in 12 languages, including 30 books and monographs, and has contributed to dozens of textbooks. He has presented over 100 scientific papers in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Caroline Crocker.

In fact, the “not a real scientist” label doesn’t fit any of the Darwin doubters whose cases are presented in Slaughter of the Dissidents. Some of these scientists have already gained recognition through the amazing film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Dr. Bergman picks up where Ben Stein left off, delving more deeply into the cases of Caroline Crocker and Guillermo Gonzalez. He also introduces his readers to many other highly qualified scientists who saw their careers derailed when their doubts about Darwinism came to the attention of their superiors.

Guillermo Gonzalez.

So aside from their personal sacrifices, what’s the harm? Dr. Bergman points out that so far, the majority of Americans side with the Darwin doubters. Surveys indicate that at least 44% believe God created the earth and all the basic kinds of life, another 38% fall somewhere along the continuum between creationism and theistic evolution, and only 9% are pure evolutionists.

But as the product of public education myself, including a journalism curriculum that taught, as far back as the 1970s, that what we cannot see is a figment of our imaginations, I worry about my own exhaustively educated generation and those of the future. Now that atheistic Darwinism is the only subject that can be safely taught in our schools and universities. Now that even a whiff of sympathy for intelligent design is punishable by immediate dismissal. And now that the God of the Bible has been booted clear out of public life, what will become of our Biblically ignorant citizenry not only in this life but, far more importantly, in the life to come?

Dr. Bergman provides suggestions for supporting the fight to restore academic freedom in this country, but it
seems like an uphill battle. The politically correct evolutionary worldview is championed by groups like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State; such groups are always standing by, ready to snuff out any suggestion of a Designer with lawsuits that few schools can afford to fight.

Rod LeVake.

Darwinism is also part of the mainstream news media’s dogma, as readers of most daily newspapers can attest, and as Dr. Bergman demonstrates again and again. Take, for example, the case of Rod LeVake, a Minnesota biology teacher who was removed from his high school biology class because he dared to criticize Darwinism. Incredibly, at least one national news magazine felt compelled to weigh in on his case. “Time portrayed creation-believing scientists as an almost non-existent minority,” Bergman reports, “claiming ‘reputable scientists who agree with LeVake can be counted on one hand’ … Time went so far as to portray
Mr. LeVake (in a full-page article) as a hillbilly” (p. 213).

No wonder creationists and intelligent design advocates are so often mocked by the highly educated, who greet any suggestion of an alternative to Darwinism with some version of “Real scientists believe in evolution!” Now, thanks to Bergman’s efforts, we can at last explain why that may seem to be the case: Darwinism appears to be the prevailing worldview because it is the only one that is allowed in our classrooms, on our campuses, on the pages of our mainstream newspapers and on the lips of mainstream broadcast reporters.

I finished Slaughter of the Dissidents more convinced than ever that it is time for those of us who care about academic freedom—and about proclaiming the truth of the Bible—to fight this unconscionable censorship. Read this outstanding book, and you will no doubt agree.

Reference
Dawkins, Richard. 2005. The illusion of design. Natural History, November 1.

(published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Winter 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-3.htm).

Turkmenistan turns the screws

Officials in Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country told a Christian worker that all religions other than Sunni Islam are now forbidden.

When he met with about twenty other believers in January, the police arrested the entire group, and all were abused and insulted. A Muslim leader brought charges against them, and heavy fines were given.

Two children who were present were later humiliated in front of their entire schools.

Ask God to comfort the believers and provide them with the means to pray their fines.

(from a Christian prayer letter, May 2011)

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Pray for Kubilay

A Christian pastor from a "secular" Islamic country writes: This week as my son Kubilay was leaving school he was beaten up again by a group of kids. They chased after him from the school cursing him and calling him a 'dirty Christian.' In middle school some of his teachers gave him bad grades for 'religious reasons' and he was unable to get into a good high school Last week he was both beaten up and given bad grades. These grades are very important for him to get into university and the teachers want to prevent this. My son was at the head of the class and they purposely dropped his grades.

We really need your prayers for Kubilay. He is only 15 years old. He is understandably depressed and we are saddened as well.

(from a Christian prayer letter, May 2011)

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Is Jesus Lord?

The Lord Jesus is either Lord of all,

or He is not Lord at all!

(Dr. Robert A. Cook, "Walk with the King today, and be a blessing!")

The Shadow of Death - disappeared from the 2011 NIV Bible

One current example of dangerous numbing down of the Christian faith is the 2011 NIV Bible. In Job, Amos, Psalms, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the translators have removed all 16 references to our greatest motivator for evangelizing - the "shadow of death" - and replaced the phrase with "darkness."

The words "shadow of death" in the Old Testament are from the Hebrew word "Tsalmaveth," which literally means the "grave" or, figuratively, "calamity." The grave has been artfully removed!

Now Job in his struggles never has to face death. He only faces some kind of internal "darkness." If he was alive today, he could simply get a prescription drug to avoid this challenge. The valley of the shadow of death of Psalm 23 has disappeared, into a footnote.

Our body begins to die around our 25th year. Our Creator is preparing us, after only two and a half decades of life, to enter a glorious world where there is no death. Our duty as Christians is to "take" as many of those around us on the trip by sharing the everlasting gospel with them. We do not need to be shielded by a miserably comfortable religion, existing in what I call a "numbed down" Christianity! 

(Tom White, Voice of the Martyrs, May 2011)

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Earth's Magnetic Field is Decaying Too Fast to be Millions of Years Old

New and much better data over the past 110 years of the earth's magnetic field shows that it is decaying with a half life of 1116 years.  If Noah's Flood was in 2346 B.C. (per Bishop Ussher), it would have been 15 times stronger then. If there was no Flood, in 42500 B.C. it would have been 1 trillion times stronger! Further evidence that the earth’s magnetic field is young.

Selections from Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Decaying Steadily—with a Little Rhythm, by D. Russell Humphreys.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Winter 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-3.htm).

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Introduction

Figure 1. Dipole part of earth’s magnetic field.
The magnetic lines of force originate in the
earth’s electrically conductive core \
(fluid outer part, solid inner part),
penetrate the earth’s mantle of solid rock
above the core, and extend far out into space.

The earth’s magnetic field is is the familiar two-pole (north and south) field shown in Figure 1. The strength of its source is called the magnetic dipole moment.

Four decades ago, Keith McDonald and Robert Gunst (1967, 1968) compiled the results of such measurements from 1835 to 1965. They drew a startling conclusion: during those 130 years, the earth’s magnetic dipole moment had steadily decreased by over 8 percent! Such a fast change is astonishing for something as big as a planetary magnetic field. Nevertheless, the rapid decline remained relatively unknown to the public, a “trade secret” known mainly to researchers and students of geomagnetism.

A few years later, Thomas Barnes (1971), a creation physicist, began publicizing the trade secret. Dr. Barnes’s fit (1973) to the dipole decay data he had then gave a half-life of 1365 years (time constant τ of 1970 years).

Figure 2. Previous compilation and fit
(Humphreys, 1983) of 34 analyses
of earth’s magnetic dipole moment
from 1829 to 1980. Large scatter mainly
due to different methods of analysis.
Time constant was 2049 (± 79) years
(half-life of 1420 years).

The decay rate is so fast that if extrapolated smoothly more than a dozen or so millennia into the past, the earth’s magnetic field then would have been unreasonably strong.

After Dr. Barnes fitted the dipole moment decay to MacDonald and Gunst’s compilation of data, I added newer data from the geomagnetic literature and made a somewhat more extensive fit, shown in Figure 2 (Humphreys, 1983). Even more recent and systematic data are now available, so in this paper I present a new curve fit to the new data.

A Better Compilation of Magnetic Data

In 1968 the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) began more systematically measuring, gathering, and analyzing geomagnetic data from all over the world. This group of geomagnetic professionals introduced a “standard spherical harmonic representation” of the field called the International geomagnetic Reference Field, or IGRF. Every five years, starting starting in 1970, they have published both dipole and non-dipole components of the field.

Using older data, the IAGA also extended the model back to the beginning of the twentieth century. With the issuance of the latest data set, IGRF-11, we have a standardized set of geomagnetic data from 1900 to 2010. You can download it free of charge as an ASCII file, a table of over 2700 numbers, from the National Geophysical Data Center website (International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, 2010). One of the IAGA authors estimates accuracies that I have used here (Lowes, 2010). The IGRF is the most consistent set of global geomagnetic data that cover such a long period of time.

Fitting a Curve to the Data

Figure 8. IGRF-11 dipole moments
with exponential line only.

Figure 8 is a log-linear graph (see Appendix B) showing the dipole moments of the new compilation of data. The improved IGRF-11 dipole moment data set gives a much more accurate half-life of 1116 years (time constant τ of 1610.9 ± 9.6 years).

Unexpectedly, the deviations from the straight line followed a smooth small “S”-shaped sinusoidal curve.

Possible Cause of the Sinusoid

Since the nineteenth century, geoscientists have noted a periodicity of about 60 years in the length of earth’s day (i.e., in the rotation rate of the mantle), the peak differences being several milliseconds per day (Gross, 2001). They did not find a clear connection to that in the geomagnetic data. But a recent report, confirming a 62 ± 3-year period in the length of day, found a rough correlation with the inclination and declination of the field (Roberts et al., 2007).

The six-decade sinusoid may come from a magnetically mediated mechanical east-west oscillation between the mantle and the core. This would affect the length of the day.

The sinusoid part of the curve fit in this paper appears to be the first clear indication of a 66-year periodicity in the magnetic moment. It is surprising that no one has previously detected this!

Discussion and Conclusion

The decay rate is so fast that if extrapolated smoothly more than a dozen or so millennia into the past, the earth’s magnetic field then would have been unreasonably strong. Further evidence that the earth’s magnetic field is young.

References (selected)
Barnes, T.G. 1971. Decay of the earth’s magnetic field and the geochronological implications. CRSQ 8:24–29.

Barnes, T.G. 1973. Electromagnetics of the earth’s field and evaluation of electric conductivity, current, and joule heating in the earth’s core. CRSQ 9:222–230.

Gross, R. 2001. A combined length-of-day series spanning 1832–1997: LUNAR97. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 123:65–76.

Humphreys, D.R. 1983. The creation of the earth’s magnetic field. CRSQ 20:89–94.

Lowes, F.J. 2010. The International Geomagnetic Reference Field: a “health” warning. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/IAGA/vmod/igrfhw.html.

McDonald, K.L,. and R.H. Gunst. 1967. An analysis of the earth’s magnetic field from 1835 to 1965. ESSA Technical Report IER 4 6 –IES 1. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

McDonald, K.L. and R.H. Gunst. 1968. Recent trends in the earth’s magnetic field. Journal of Geophysical Research 73:2057–2067.

Roberts, P.H., Z.J. Yu, and C.T. Russell. 2007. On the 60-year signal
from the core. Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics 100(1):11–35.

Wurmbrand Center and Museum dedicated to the Persecuted Church

Voice of the Martyrs has opened the new Wurmbrand Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. One highlight of the center is a museum in the main lobby dedicated to the persecuted church. The museum will house original Tyndale and King James Bible pages, burned Bibles of our brothers and sisters in hostile nations, a history of VOM-USA work, and a "living" wall featuring video clips that relate to current work with our persecuted family. Most of the museum should be completed by December 2011.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, April 2011)

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The Orwellian Nature of the End Times

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (George Orwell, from an unpublished preface written for Animal Farm)

This has profound meaning today in societies that are trying to limit the spread of the gospel, through persecution of Christians, or the political correctness of collectivist and atheist elites which seeks to make the gospel irrelevant. George Orwell understood the evil that lurks in the collective will of people who attempt to stamp out truth. This is most famously expressed in his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Peter Lewis, in The Road to 1984, a biography of George Orwell, writes (pp. 16-17):

"Orwell is read today because he asked questions to which he did not pretend there were answers. He saw why revolutions always go wrong, why plans for equality end in proving that some are more equal than others, and how, in the name of a new order, the collective will abuses its power over the individual.

"One of the things Orwell bequeathed us was the adjective 'Orwellian' - commonly employed, hard to define. It is a frightening word, generally applied to a society organized to crush and dehumanize the individual, sometimes signifying the alienation of that individual if he dares to rebel, like Winston Smith of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Virtually all Orwell's novels have the same plot: the rebel or outsider seeking to escape from a hostile, monolithic society, attempting to make a more natural life for himself, and then being forced back into the slot assigned to him in the system. It reaches its highest development, or deepest despair, in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is impossible to read it now without comparing it with the Gulag Archipelago, its camps and its psychiatric hospitals. Today there are now prisons in many countries like the old Soviet Lubianka, everywhere they resemble almost uncannily Orwell's Ministry of Love.

"It was with the lonely outsider, the rebel, that Orwell naturally identified himself. Had he lived in a totalitarian society, he knew he would have been eliminated with all possible speed. He was a Solzhenitsyn without a Gulag. No one, he said, would write books unless driven by 'some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand'. The knowledge that he spoke for such victims and the danger that there would be many more, in many more lands, even perhaps in his beloved England, was surely Orwell's demon."

The Christian can compare Orwell's prophecies with what the Bible tells us about the end times. We live in days where persecution of the gospel is closing in around us, our avenues of liberty are being cut off. We need to teach our children to cling to Christ through all the trials that are coming to this world!

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Mother's Day around the World

Thank God that Mother's Day is celebrated in all these countries today!

Anguilla, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, British Honduras, Bermuda, Bonaire, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Gold Coast, Greece, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Burma, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanganyika, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe.


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Yes, Jesus loves me - even in Arabia!

Praise the Lord that workers in the Arabian Peninsula overheard a waitress singing "Yes, Jesus loves me" as she worked. This woman is one of many new believers, many from the Philippines, to find employment. Pray that she, and many like her, would be able to connect with a local fellowship.

(from a Christian prayer letter, April 2011)

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The Crisis of Belief in Islamic Countries - Where Next?

"In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come." (Haggai 2:6-7)

I never imaged that I would live to see the Arab world fight so hard for freedom from their oppressive dictators. Fear had gripped people for decades, yet now they are being bold and courageous even though thousands have been killed in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and other countries. As revolution continues to rage throughout the Islamic Middle East, my prayer is that Muslims may see that the corrupt leaders, poverty, and a lack of freedom they are revolting against are all effects of an Islamic worldview.

I pray they experience a crisis of belief that would open them to hearing the Gospel. I believe this may already be happening!

With all this uncertainty, Christian chat lines in some Muslim countries are being flooded with seekers, and large numbers are watching the few Gospel-oriented television programs that are available. God is giving the church an open door to take the gospel to the tens of millions who have not heard it before. Are we ready to step up? When these countries open up, are there workers ready to go there?

Please pray for God to help Christian churches and agencies to mobilize and train missionaries. Pray that Arab Christians may be found and others believers who know Arabic who would be willing to go to these countries to share Christ.

(combined from two Christian prayer bulletins, April 2011)

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Taxing Churches in the U.S.

More early signs of persecution of the church, this time in the United States... A pastor from Pennsylvania asks, "In our nation, under our Constitution, churches and other religious entities are exempt from taxation. So why was our church targeted?"

21 Ripple Brook Rd, Centermoreland

Tunkhannock, PA 18657

570.333.5185

Pastor James Howell

Ian Bonthron, Youth

Northmoreland Baptist Church

April, 2011

Dear Friends,

As the pastor of a small but vibrant church in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it has been my joy to serve my congregation and the Tunkhannock community for 28 years. We are a Bible-believing church, made up of people who love the Lord, and who are faithful, taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth.

I am sure you can imagine my dismay when, to my surprise, I received a property tax bill from the county for a portion of our new church building. This was not right and so I went to the county commissioners to challenge this tax - to no avail.

As Christians, I understand that we are to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," but in our nation; under our Constitution; churches and other religious entities are exempt from taxation. So why was our church targeted?

I turned to a national legal ministry, but they were unable to help. Then someone told me about the Pennsylvania Family Institute and its Independence Law Center. I gave Attorney Randy Wenger a call, and he signed up to help us immediately. He tells me the law and precedent are on our side, and he has filed an appeal on our behalf.

I would ask you to pray for our case (which could ultimately impact many churches) and for the Pennsylvania Family Institute. We are benefiting from the hard work and expertise which I understand is made possible by generous gifts from people like you. Thank you, too, for helping!

I am grateful that the Independence Law Center was there when we needed them, and pray they continue to have the resources to help others facing similar challenges.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor James Howell

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Carbon 14 dates in ancient samples cluster around Noah's Flood

A comprehensive statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates for 93 totally different ancient samples gives surprising results. Instead of a variety of ages stretching all the way back to the limits of statistical error, the dates fit a bell curve that center on single point in time. This signature points to the Global Flood of Noah!

Selections from A Case of "Missing" Decay, An Analysis of C-14 Detected in Very Old Samples, by Rick Sanders.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Winter 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-3.htm).

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Introduction

Radiocarbon (C-14) dating over the past thirty-some years has grown rapidly due to ultra-sensitive detection equipment known as accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS. This instrument is capable of detecting minute amounts of radioactive elements present within samples. Many geologically ancient samples have been tested and appear to contain trace amounts of radiocarbon. C-14 has a half-life of only 5730 years, which means any carbon sample older than around 100,000 years before the present (YBP) should contain zero radiocarbon.

Creation scientists argue that the C-14 detected within these ancient samples is in fact intrinsic and provides evidence for a young earth. Criticisms of creation scientists argue that small amounts of background contamination occur in radiocarbon measurements.

Analysis of the Data

There has been to my knowledge no rigorous and systematic study of radiocarbon content in ancient samples done by the scientific community.

I have compiled a listing of radiocarbon measurements made on geologically ancient samples taken from results published in the literature. There were two sources for the radiocarbon data I used in producing this paper: two tables shown in Baumgardner (2005), including his summary of previously published results (pp. 596–597) and the RATE project results on coal (p. 605). The other source was a study by Snelling (2008).

I excluded from my study graphite and all diamond samples. Types of object that were included were coal, wood, shell, foraminifera, bone, fossils, and others. The available data from these 93 ancient samples that underwent AMS radiocarbon dating is shown in the age graph of Figure 3.

Figure 3. Histogram showing the “apparent” radiocarbon ages of the tested samples with a normal curve fitted to the data. The line shows how the apparent ages of the tested samples appear to conform to the normal distribution, the well known “bell curve.”

The average apparent age of the samples is 51,155 YBP (Years Before Present). This is not the “actual age” of each sample, it is the “radiocarbon age”. It is important to distinguish between the two.

Carbon 14 originates in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays bombard nitrogen molecules and convert them to radioactive C-14, which can then be taken in by plants, absorbed into ocean water, or retained in the atmosphere. If any factor in C-14 production is changed, its level in the atmosphere also will change. For example, if the sun has a period of unusually high activity, it can shield the earth from the cosmic rays, thus lowering the amount of C-14 creation.

Thus there are a number of ways to fit this age within a young-earth paradigm. The simplest is to infer that the C-14/C-12 ratio was much lower in the past relative to today’s value. Plants and animals that were buried and preserved in the Flood sediments would therefore, when they died, begin with much lower C-14/C-12 ratios than is the case today. Reasons for lower C-14/C-12 ratio before the Flood could include a larger biomass exchanging with the atmosphere or a lower rate of C-14 production, perhaps due to a stronger magnetic field.

The Age Graph is a Bell Curve, which Points to a Single Historical Event (the Flood?)

What is of greatest significance is that the ages of the samples tested can be approximated by the normal distribution, the well known “bell curve”. This implies that all of the samples date to the same geological time. This suggests a single event when all of the given samples were isolated from the carbon cycle. Remember, the 93 samples represent many different sample types, dating to many different geologic time periods and analyzed in different laboratories — but all date to a single event. This is consistent with the young-earth creationist expectation that all of these samples date to the time of the Flood.

A word of caution. As noted above, no systematic analysis of radiocarbon in ancient geologic samples has been done to date, of which I am aware. My conclusion is reasonable but not exhaustive. This being said, the radiocarbon dating is still on the side of the creationist, and should be regarded a friend rather than a foe in the study of young-earth geology.

Summary and Conclusion

To clarify, this study does not rule out any trace of contamination in the samples tested. I suggest that an intensive research initiative could address the problem of contamination and intrinsic radiocarbon by testing across different sample types and ages, pre-test treatment regimens, and laboratories and then carefully analyzing the results. Unfortunately, this expensive solution will probably be necessary for the true nature of radiocarbon content and contamination in very old samples to be resolved in a satisfactory way for most people.

Radiocarbon dating is just one more demonstration that true science will always align with a proper understanding of God’s Word. Scientific study results and statistical reports always have a capacity for error, while the Bible is not subject to error when its message is understood correctly.

References (selected)

Baumgardner, J. 2005. C-14 Evidence for a recent global flood and a young earth. In Vardiman, L., A. Snelling, and E. Chaffin (editors), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol. 2, pp. 587–630. Institute
for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, Chino
Valley, AZ.

Snelling, A. 2008. Radiocarbon ages for fossil ammonites and wood in cretaceous strata near Redding, California. Answers Research Journal 1(1):128–144. http://www.answersingenesis.org/contents/379/Radiocarbon_Ammonites_Wood.pdf (as of June 4, 2010).

Between Two Tigers

When Vietnam opened up partially in the early 1990's, we met a grandmother (63 years old) who had just been released from prison. She had spent a year there for holding a Christian meeting in her village, where there was no church. Even with heavy shackles on here legs, Mrs. Fo Thi Manh witnessed to others around her. When the police finally returned her to her village, they gave her a microphone and insisted that she publicly deny her faith.

Standing before hundreds in her village, she refused to recant and instead took the opportunity to declare her faith. She told us, "Just like shaving a tiger's hair doesn't do away with its stripes, so I am still a Christian. I still have meetings in my house; now there are more than a dozen."

Her story is told in the VOM book Between Two Tigers: Testimonies of Vietnamese Christians.

This Easter we remember that our Savior, in his last days on earth, set his face toward Jerusalem and remained committed to the will of the Father - we are thankful for the family of believers who demonstrate that commitment today.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, April 2011)

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Pornography Epidemic Now Among Women as well as Men

Increasing numbers of women admit to being hooked on internet porn. Why is this happening, and where are they finding help?



"I remember the feeling of being sucked in, really wanting that two-minute fix, that numbness I got when I used porn," says Caroline. "I was stressed out, and I risked being late for my interview, but I pressed play anyway and fast-forwarded it to the bit I wanted. It took two minutes." But the relief was to be short-lived. "Afterwards I just hated myself for giving in and getting off on images that treated women like pieces of meat. But I kept going back."
 
Caroline is not alone. While it's accepted that women are watching – and enjoying – porn more and more, it's less recognised that some are also finding it hard to stop. At Quit Porn Addiction, the UK's main porn counselling service, almost one in three clients are women struggling with their own porn use, says founder and counsellor Jason Dean. Two years ago, there were none.While more than six out of 10 women say they view web porn, one study in 2006 by the Internet Filter Review found that 17% of women describe themselves as "addicted".
 
There is little difference in the way the genders become hooked, says Jason. There is the same pattern of exposure, addiction, and desensitisation to increasingly hardcore images. The main contrast between male and female porn addicts is how much more guilty women feel. "Porn addiction is seen as a man's problem – and therefore not acceptable for women," says Dean. "There's a real sense among women that it's bad, dirty, wrong and they're often unable to get beyond that."
 
The first support group in the US run for women by women was founded by Crystal Renaud, who also wrote a new book on women's addiction to porn, called Dirty Girls Come Clean.
 
A committed Christian, she first came across porn at the age of 11 in a magazine that belonged to her brother, and was addicted for eight years before she got her wake-up call when she arranged an anonymous hook-up with a man she met over the net. Renaud recalls: "I had no friends. No passions. I had one mission and purpose in my life: pornography. Any way I could find it, I would. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing. Home, school, my friend's houses, summer camp and yes, even church: my addiction came too.
 
As a trained counsellor, Renaud now calls women's addiction to pornography "widespread and silent". In almost every case, the women she meets believe they are the only ones ever to have struggled with the issue. "Porn and sexual addiction has always been referred to as a man's problem," says Renaud. "But for women it's an unspoken struggle. We have to give them the opportunity to say: 'Me too.'"

(for more see Tanith Carey, Why more and more women are using pornography, Guardian.co.uk, April 7, 2011)

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