Sunday, April 29, 2012

Christmas party? No, a disturbance in the community!

An elementary school student at the Pocono Mountain School District of Pennsylvania was told by school officials that she could not invite classmates to a Christmas party at her church.

Sometimes when government officials are confronted with the unconstitutional, and frankly preposterous, nature of their restrictions, they quickly back down and change their policies - and no court action is necessary.

However, even after Federal Judge Richard Caputo ruled once in favor of "K.A.," the elementary school student, the school district pushed back, arguing that it needed the power to enforce restrictions such as the one in question because such invitations can create a "disturbance in the community."

The appeals court upheld the original ruling, but the school has now filed a second appeal.

Lawyers with the Independence Law Center and Alliance Defense Fund were available for the case. They plan to continue their involvement as long as necessary to change the policies in the school and ensure religious liberty and freedom of speech.

(from Pennsylvania Citizen, Spring 2012, a publication of Pennsylvania Family Institute)

Where does Hatred come from?

   The net result


      of Sin


         is Hatred.

(Dr. Robert A. Cook, Walk with the King Ministries)

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Lives of Christian Heroes, for your Children to Read

(from Nancy Tichy, Resourcing the Missional Family Mission Frontiers, March-April 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

We deeply want a revival of family religion

Charles Spurgeon, the 19th century's "prince of preachers," wrote:

We deeply want a revival of family religion. The Christian family was the bulwark of godliness in the days of the puritans, but in these evil times hundreds of families of so-called Christians have no family worship, no restraint upon growing sons, and no wholesome instruction or discipline. How can we hope to see the kingdom of our Lord advance when His own disciples do not teach His gospel to their own children? Oh, Christian men and women, be thorough in what you do and know and teach! Let your families be trained in the fear of God and be yourselves ‘holiness unto the Lord,’ so shall you stand like a rock amid the surging waves of error and ungodliness which rage around us.

(Charles Spurgeon, The Kind of Revival We Need, quoted in Rob Rienow, The Essential Role of the Family in World Evangelization Mission Frontiers, March-April 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Intelligent Designer must have employed Miracles!

Naturalism cannot account for all of the parts necessary for life coming together at one time. Only an instantaneous creation and assembly of all of the necessary parts into a functioning unit can produce life. This is the basis of Intelligent Design. Anyone who would seriously consider this must admit that the Intelligent Designer used miraculous methods to do this!

The Bible teaches that God created everything from nothing, ex nihilo, with the appearance of age. Adam, the trees in the Garden of Eden, the rays of sunlight that warmed the garden, all evidently appeared mature, though they were all brand new. Is God a Deceiver by creating things that look old when they are not? No, he did not leave us in the dark or try to “trick us” or “test our faith”. God told us what he did!

Selections from The Case for the Mature Creation Hypothesis, by Jerry Bergman.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 3, Winter 2012)

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Irrefutable Evidence for Intelligent Design

Transcription and Translation.
Naturalism simply cannot explain life. Consider that DNA is useless without: (1) all of the complex machinery required to produce mRNA, such as RNA polymerase, and (2) the machinery required to translate the mRNA code into protein such as a ribosome. Furthermore, a ribosome is only one of multiple proteins that the cellular machinery produces from mRNA. Hundreds of complex proteins are necessary for a cell to be alive and, therefore, a functional cell could have been created only as a complete functioning unit, not as individual parts. Also, most nucleotides rapidly degrade at the temperatures that scientists speculate existed on the early earth (Irion, 1998).

Evolution cannot account for all of the parts necessary for life coming together at one time and being properly assembled and activated as a unit in a timely manner so that it will produce life.
Products produced by the nonliving world (such as smooth stones polished by moving water) could never produce either plant or animal life because all life is based on enormous amounts of information, and the parts produced by that information must be assembled according to a designed plan in an environment, such as a certain ecosystem, that supports life (Schroeder, 2001; Yockey, 1992; Behe, 1996)

The Water Cycle.
Furthermore, the earth is a system involving many complex feedback cycles. A well-known example is that the earth must have an oxygen cycle, a carbon cycle, a nitrogen cycle, a sulfur cycle, a hydrologic cycle, and numerous other interconnected cycles in order to sustain life on the planet. The earth must have been created with all of its cycle systems functioning to allow life to be able to live on it.

The Intelligent Designer at Work

Since evolution cannot explain this problem, and it has been documented that this approach is not feasible, only an instantaneous creation and assembly of all of the necessary parts into a functioning unit can produce life.

If creation has occurred at all, it is reasonable that it would have been a complete creation. It must have had an “appearance of age” at the moment of creation. This Creation must have included all the chemical elements already organized in all the organic and inorganic chemical compounds and mixtures necessary to support the processes of the earth and of life on the earth (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, pp. 344-345, 369).
Eighteenth-century naturalist Philip Gosse argued that since both living and nonliving things existed in never-ending cycles, the Intelligent Designer created everything in the act of progressing in its cycle—egg to chicken, chicken to egg, oak to acorn, then to oak, and again to acorn in an endless cycle. Life would reproduce and develop, with animals having skin, blood, and bones when created, all making them appear to someone who falsely assumes that all current processes must be extrapolated into the past older than they actually were when created. This theory he called prochronism, or “outside of time” (Gosse, 1857).

Nobel laureate George Wald even stated that he believed the universe was designed for life. As an example, he stated that the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen “have unique properties” required for life that are not shared by any other element in the periodic table of the elements (interview in Levy, 1998, p. 12).

Creation from Nothing

Plato and other ancient sages believed that God created the universe from preexisting chaos (Hannam, 2009, p. 63). In contrast, Christianity taught that God created the universe from nothing, thus the creation was not a remake of something old, but rather was the creation of something that was new and that Genesis says was “very good.” This is important for the doctrines of the Fall of mankind into sin and death described in Genesis and Jesus’ sacrifice to restore humankind (Hannam, 2009, p. 41).

Ex-nihilo creation from nothing always results in all created objects having the appearance of maturity. This conclusion applies to all miracles, including everything from the creation of wine from water to the creation of Adam and Eve from dust.

The idea of mature creation may account for the discrepancy between the age that scientists have determined for various aspects of creation and the age that Genesis presents.

The problems inherent in dating an instantaneous, supernatural creation are illustrated by the creation of the first man, Adam. If a modern onlooker assumed that Adam was born an infant as are modern humans, he would conclude that Adam was about 20 years old when, in fact, he was only about one day old. This does not imply that the Creator is deceptive but reflects the fact that the human body had to be created fully formed and functional in order to exist as a living organism.

If Adam’s blood were not already circulating in his circulatory system when he was created, the few minutes required to prime his circulation system could cause major cell death or damage. Furthermore, all of Adam’s organs—including his heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, etc. — must have been functioning simultaneously as a unit the instant that he was created. In other words, Adam must have been created as a fully mature young man.

For this reason, even though Adam was created instantaneously, he would be evaluated by many modern physiological measurements to be a 20-year old man the moment he was created (Poythress, 2006). An example is bone ossification measurements that evaluate the level of conversion of cartilage into bone as the child develops. A physician might conclude from bone-to-cartilage ratios, that Adam was 20 years old, some evidence for an age much less than 20 might also be found. We might not detect certain effects of aging (such as DNA and RNA damage) in a one-day-old Adam. Likewise, lack of both tooth wear, cosmic ray damage, and other signs of aging may also have indicated an age of a few days old instead of 20 years old.

Kyle Butt asks, "How old were Adam and Eve two seconds after God created them? They were literally two seconds old! Yet they walked, talked, and looked like adult human beings, and even had the ability to reproduce" (Butt, 2002, p. 40-R).

Artistic depiction of
the Garden of Eden.
We know that the Garden of Eden appeared old because it had fully grown trees with fruit on them when created.

The earth, solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, and entire universe were brought into existence supernaturally during six 24-hour days. Top soil and trees appeared virtually instantaneously in the Garden. Fully-grown animals were miraculously formed on land and in the air, complete with symbiotic relationships. The seas instantly swarmed with creatures, great and small, that had never been born or developed from infancy. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were adults from their first breaths. The sun’s nuclear fusion furnace began on Day 4, at full power and in thermodynamic equilibrium. Starlight from distant stars was created in transit, complete with a virtual history of information embedded within the light waves. Adam and Eve could look at the night sky their first evening on Earth and see cosmic light sources much as we do tonight. To an observer the completed creation on Day 6 was fully functioning in a steady state (DeYoung, 2010, p. 54).
The sun must have been able to heat and light the earth on the day it was created. Although it takes only eight minutes for the sun’s light to reach the earth, it takes an estimated 10,000 to 170,000 years for the gamma rays produced in the sun’s core to reach the sun’s surface as visible photons due to the absorption and reemission path taken as the photons journey outwards (Sturrock, 1985). The photons must have been created in transit as if millions of years had passed.

Russell Humphey's
Starlight and Time.
As God created the universe for a reason it is not unreasonable to infer that the stars were created with their light in transit (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 369). Although other theories exist to explain the fact that we can see stars that are millions of light years away, such as Russell Humphrey’s white hole cosmology (Humphreys, 1994), the mature creation view can effectively explain how distant supernovae can be seen from the earth within a Biblical time framework.

Interesting questions remain. Did Adam had a navel? (Since he was not born of a woman.) Did the first trees have rings? (The trees would have been fully grown, and fruit trees would have fruit on them, giving the appearance of age). Would ground erosion be evident at the time of Adam, aside from that caused by newly created rivers, a moment after they were created?

Miracles

Creation ex nihilo is not a natural process. Rather it is a miracle.

Resurrection of Lazarus.
Arguably the “most spectacular of Jesus’ miracles” was the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Mary and Martha (Sanders, 1962, p. 103). Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after Lazarus had been in the grave for four days, long enough for his body to begin major levels of decomposition. It is for this reason that the scriptural account describes his body as having a strong, unpleasant smell.

Others Jesus raised from the dead had only recently died (namely, Jairus’s daughter in Mark 5:22–43 and the son of the widow at Nain in Luke 7:11–17), and some argue that they were only in a coma from which they were revived.

But no such argument can be made in the case of Lazarus. When a body smells, it means that the stomach acids have begun to hydrolyze the body’s internal tissues and that the intestinal bacteria has begun digest connective tissue and other body carbohydrates. However, writing books arguing that Lazarus’s resurrection was medically impossible does not prove that the event did not occur, only that it was a miracle.

Jesus turns water into wine.
Another example of a miracle is Christ’s conversion of water into wine (John 2:7–11). Scientifically, this is impossible because water contains hydrogen and oxygen in a two to one ratio. Wine contains water, plus a carbon based compound called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, and various flavors and other components. Jesus performed a natural process instantaneously, not in a year or so as is normally required to produce wine from
grapes using water.

As it is a “strain to fit the history of the world into a biblical 6,000 years” (Gardiner, 2009, p. 132), it is also a strain to convert water into wine in a few seconds, or to turn back the clock on a dead man. If these events actually occurred, as the Bible and Christians have believed for 2,000 years, all these events are miracles.

Is God a Deceiver?

A major objection to the appearance-of-age theory is that if God made the earth appear older than it actually is, then He has deceived us because the earth is not, in fact, as old as it appears. 

Kyle Butt concludes that the deception claim would be valid except that:

God told us what he did! He did not leave us in the dark or try to “trick us” or “test our faith” by hiding from us important information that He knew we would need. Rather, He was very straightforward and honest with us. Considering the material found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis (and elsewhere throughout the Bible), no one can justifiably accuse God of deception (Butt, 2002, p. 40-R).
Conversely, John Morris adds that if “scientists extrapolating present process  are right and the universe is old, then God has lied to us, for He clearly said He created all things in six days, not too long ago” (Morris, 2010, p. 15).

Appearance of Age, Evolutionists, and the Culture Wars

One evolutionist Professor, John Wagner has noticed the difficulty in teaching evolution in the classroom to students with a religious veiwpoint. He wrote:

Most undergraduate students take geology courses as the perceived least painful option to fulfill their institution’s general education laboratory science requirements … Many of these students, especially in large state-assisted schools … bring religious viewpoints and perspectives to their studies which espouse profoundly negative views about evolution and the geologic time scale. Students in this category will grudgingly memorize the minimum amount of geological information they need to pass the course, but will let the instructor know that they don’t believe a word of it is true. This type of situation doesn’t help the student, the class morale, or the greater goal of scientific literacy for all people (Wagner, 2005, p. 194).
The solution that he found very successful in both physical and historical geology classes is:

to introduce the concept of apparent age prior to discussing the geological time scale or the age of the earth in the lecture setting. By acknowledging up front that special creation is a possible option, so long that creation carries the imprint of apparent age, the tension among students is relieved and geological processes and concepts can be investigated in good conscience based on the apparent age of rocks, fossils, or landscapes. With students no longer on the defensive, they are free to study geology without feeling like they are betraying their religious faith (Wagner, 2005, p. 194).
The evidence given here should cause all evolutionists to consider, as Wagner does, that special creation is viable!

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References (selected)

Behe, M. 1996. Darwin’s Black Box. Free Press, New York, NY.

Butt, K. 2002. What is the doctrine of apparent age? Reason and Revelation 1(10):40–41.

Comins, N. 1993. What If the Moon Didn’t Exist? Harper Collins, New York, NY.

Gardiner, J. 2009. At liberty to divulge. American Scholar. 87(2):131–133.

Gonzalez, G., and J. Richards. 2004. The Privileged Planet. Regnery, New York, NY.

Gosse, P. 1857. Omphalos. An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. John Van Voorst, London, England.

Hannam, J. 2009. God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. Icon Books, London, UK.

Irion, R. 1998. Ocean scientists find life, warmth in the seas. Science 279:1302–1303.

Levy, D. 1998. Four simple facts behind the miracle of life. Parade Magazine. June 12, p. 12.

Morris, J. 2010. Creation with the appearance of age. Acts & Facts 39(12):15.

Poythress, V. 2006. Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach. Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL.

Sanders, J.N. 1962. Lazarus of Bethany. In Buttrick, G. (editor), The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Abingdon Press, New York, NY.

Schroeder, G. 2001. The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth. The Free Press, New York, NY.

Sturrock P. 1985. Physics of the Sun: The Solar Interior. Springer, New York, NY.

Wagner, J. 2005. Using the concept of apparent age to defuse creationist confrontations in the classroom. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 37(7):194.

Whitcomb, J.C., and H.M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Philadelphia, PA.

Yockey, H. 1992. Information Theory and Molecular Biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Tennessee Teachers no longer Monkeys of Evolutionists

The Washington Post and other liberal news outlets report today that a new law goes into effect in Tennessee which allows the teaching of creationism, climate-change denial and other non-science into science classrooms. These critics call the bill the new "monkey bill", with echoes back to the 1925 John Scopes "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, which opened the floodgates to evolutionist teaching in public schools across the U.S.

This liberal reporting is another example of scare mongering by evolutionists and their mainstream media surrogates. The truth of this new law, appropriately named the "Teacher Protection Academic Freedom Act" (Tennessee Senate Bill 893 and House Bill 368) is that it protects a teacher from discipline for teaching scientific subjects in an objective manner. This bill would make it clear that schools should create an atmosphere conducive to questioning scientific theories and that no teacher can be fired for questioning scientific theories.

The legislators of Tennessee recognized that the real issue here was that teachers had become the monkeys of evolutionists, and were subject to severe discipline for even hinting that theories like evolution and global warming had problems that need to be questioned according to the scientific method, as all scientific theories should be. Also that there is quite a bit of modern "science" that only masquerades as such, and that if it is not falsifiable, or subject to experiment that can disprove a particular hypothesis, that it does not truly qualify as science.

As David Fowler, President of Family Action of Tennessee writes in The Need for the Teacher Protection Academic Freedom Act:
critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method are often discouraged, particularly when it comes to certain scientific subjects. For example, in many classrooms, Darwinian evolution is currently taught in a completely one-sided manner, with most students never learning anything about growing scientific controversies about the theory. This may be particularly true in Tennessee where the curriculum standard regarding evolution requires only that students know “the supporting evidence for the theory of evolution,” with no allowance for knowing anything about the controversies surrounding the theory.

Textbooks routinely contain outdated and sometimes erroneous material about evolution, including various discredited “proofs” for the theory that are no longer accepted by many biologists. As a result, there is growing support among educators, scientist, and the general public to teach evolution more accurately and fairly. Yet, because of threat of censure by some in the scientific community, some scientist are reluctant to do so.
Fowler goes on to counter the scare mongering of the evolutionists who oppose freedom for teachers to teach:
What the bill does not do: The bill specifically states that the information discussed must be “scientific” and must relate to scientific theories “required to be taught under the curriculum framework developed by the state board of education.” The bill does not change the existing curriculum frameworks that govern the subject matter covered. Consequently, the amendment makes it clear that the bill is only addressing the curriculum framework adopted by the state board of education. Thus the bill does not allow the teaching of creation science or intelligent design as they are not “existing theories” being “covered” in the courses taught pursuant to our curriculum frameworks. Further, teaching those subjects has been ruled contrary to the “establishment clause.” State law cannot “trump” the U.S. Constitution.
It is a shame that the "establishment clause" arbitrarily invalidates the teaching of creation science in the public classroom, hopefully this ruling will be overturned in the future.

Nonetheless, the new Tennessee law should be defended in terms of freedom and liberty, safeguarding the teachers of the state from coercion by the evolutionist lobby. Truly, Tennessee Teachers are no longer Monkeys of Evolutionists.

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Real Faith is...

   Real Faith is:


      Risking


         the Situation


            on God.

(Dr. Robert A. Cook, Walk with the King Ministries)

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Tim Tebow and Global 4/14 Day on April 14th

Steve Karges, Founder & President of Children's Ministries International, tells the story of Tim Tebow:

Tim Tebow's moral and spiritual foundations were developed long before he became a celebrated quarterback with the Florida Gators in college, and the NFL's Denver Broncos.

His story begins with an introduction to faith during childhood.

"When I was a boy, I had been going to church, and I (had) been hearing about Jesus and how He died on the cross for my sins," Tebow shared with an audience at the University of Florida in 2009, "but I had never put my trust in Him, I didn't know what that meant," Tebow continued.

"I had been... talking to my mom and dad and I wanted to trust Christ with my life. And I was thinking, 'you know, if I get in a car wreck (tomorrow)... and I die, I don't think I'm going to heaven,'" Tebow acknowledged in a 2010 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"And I was scared," Tebow told CBN. "And so the next morning I woke up, and I grabbed my mom, and I (kneeled by) the couch and I said, 'Mom, I want to ask Jesus to come into my heart, and forgive me of my sins, and make me a child of God,' Tebow recalled of his conversion to Christ in 1993. "And from that instant, I knew I went from darkness to Light."

Tim Tebow accepted Christ at the age of 6, according to his new book, "Through My Eyes."

Tebow's understanding of the gospel, and his desire to receive Jesus as his Savior and Lord at such a young age, further supports research released one year earlier.


In 1992, Dr. Bryant Myers, then Director of World Vision's MARC Ministries, (now with Fuller Theological Seminary in California), presented his research which showed that 85% of people in the United States who make a decision for Christ, do so between the ages of 4 to14. That new evidence confirmed that children and teens under age 15 were receptive to the gospel and "ripe for harvest."

Based on Dr. Myers' research, Dr. Dan Brewster, a missiologist and then Program Director with Compassion International, coined the phrase "4/14 Window" in 1995.

The 4/14 Window refers to all children between the ages of 4 to 14. During this decade or "window," most children in this demographic develop their moral and spiritual foundations, researchers have discovered.

Tim Tebow's childhood faith supports the 4/14 Window. There are 2.3 billion children on earth under age 15 and they represent the largest unreached people group in the world.

How will Christian parents and churches respond to the boys and girls within their reach who need Christ?

An international day of prayer and fasting for these children, known as Global 4/14 Day, will take place on Saturday, April 14. This worldwide event is open to all.
"Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world..." This old song is still true today, just ask Tim Tebow.

Steve Karges is the Founder & President of Children's Ministries International, Inc. and Coordinator of Global 4/14 Day.

(reposted from ChristianNewsWire, Tebow's Childhood Faith Supports 4/14 Window, January 3, 2012)

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Sunday, April 01, 2012

Videos Probing the Truth of Islam

Jay Smith from the United Kingdom has a PhD in Muslim studies and often debates followers of Islam in Hyde Park, London. He has prepared numerous 5-10 minute critiques of Islam for Muslims.

Please pray that through Jay's ministry, many Muslims will turn to Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. Here are some of Jay's videos:





(from a Christian prayer letter, January 2012)

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