Joshua Project

Jesus said in Matthew 24:14 "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come." Jesus directly links His return to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. While no one knows the date or time of His return, we do know that this gospel of the kingdom must be preached to all the nations first. Revelation 5:9 and 7:9-10 show that there will be some from every tribe, tongue, nation and people before the Throne.



Joshua Project is a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the least followers of Christ. Accurate, regularly updated ethnic people group information is critical for understanding and completing the Great Commission.

The Project gathers, integrates and shares people group information to encourage pioneer church-planting movements among every ethnic group and to facilitate effective coordination of mission agency efforts. They compile the work of numerous missions researchers to develop a list of all ethnic peoples that is as complete as possible.

For more info, see http://joshuaproject.net/joshua-project.php.

Guajajara Bible Translation complete!

It is the first weekend in October 2010. In Brazil, at the eastern margin of the Amazon region, the dusty towns of Arame, Grajau, and Barra do Corda host parades and public celebrations. The Guajajara (pronounced gwah-zha-zhara), Brazil's most numerous indigenous people (population 21,000), have just received the complete Bible in their own language. This day was preceded by 35 years of live-in, "relational" Bible translating. It represents the joint efforts of an international array of missionaries and translators from various organizations.

Only a few days before, at a lake 25 miles from Arame, 29 baptisms took place. CrossWorld missionary Bron reports:

By 3:30 p.m., there were over 150 Guajajara Indians and others gathered by the side of the lake. We sang praises to the Lord, read His Word, prayed, listened to testimonies from some of those who were being baptized and heard the Word shared by one of the Guajajara Christian leaders. After the baptism, about 80 of us shared around the Lord's table as we joined together in communion.

(from CrossWorld, 80 Years of Missions, 2011 Calendar)

Spiritual ADHD

"Our son, Jonah, was diagnosed with ADHD when he was three years old. Jonah's therapist gave us great insight into this condition through a simple explanation. He told us that Jonah lacked the ability to screen input the way "normal" people do. For instance, the dog barking next door, the clock ticking in the kitchen, the birds singing in the garden, the washing machine humming in the garage - these all vied equally for his attention, making it difficult for Jonah to hear me calling him to dinner.

"I suspect some of us may be "spiritually ADHD." In our culture, so many sights and sounds compete for our attention, drowning out the Master's quiet call. But if we are attuned to the Spirit and the Word, we will not miss His still small voice..."

(from a Christian missionary newsletter, Fall 2010)

A Muslim's Internet Journey to Christ...

Here is what Osman, from a Muslim country, writes about his journey to Christ:

"A divine hand was directing me to God's truth. It took me about a year to come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Savior of the world and the Lord of all. I broke all my ties with Islam and the false prophet and chose to follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. My whole life has changed. I am thankful to God for this web ministry that helped me find God in a personal way."

Osman is one of those who became a disciple of Jesus Christ in 2010 through Internet evangelism ministry. Today he has a growing faith in Christ and is now a part of God's kingdom!

(from a Christian missionary newsletter, December 2010)

A 142-year old Fraud is STILL in your 7th Grader's Science Book!

SHAME on Dr. Donald Cronkite, Ph.D., author of the extremely popular 7th grader's Science textbook, Pearson Prentice Hall's Cells and Heredity in the Science Explorer series, for parading junk science as truth to our youth.

My two sons are both in 7th grade, one in public and the other in Christian school. Both schools are using Cronkite's textbook. Cronkite, who is Professor of Biology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan (cronkite@hope.edu), resuscitates the Recapitulation theory of evolutionist Ernst Haeckel, first formulated in 1868. This theory is also known as the Biogenetic Law or Embryological Parallelism - and is often taught to college students with the catchy phrase "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny". Listen to the 2005 edition of the Prentice Hall textbook, on page 149, where this is what Dr. Cronkite and your 7th grade science class teacher are instructing your child:

Figure 8

Since Darwin's time, scientists have found a great deal of evidence that supports the theory of evolution. Fossils, patterns of early development, and similar body structures all provide evidence that organisms have changed over time.

Similarities in early development. Scientists also make inferences about evolutionary relationships by comparing the early development of different organisms. Suppose you were asked to compare an adult fish, salamander, chicken, and opossum. You would probably say they look quite different from each other. However, during early development, these four organisms are similar, as you can see in Figure 8. For example, during the early stages of development all four organisms have a tail and a row of tiny slits along there throats. These similarities suggest that these vertebrate species are related and share a common ancestor.

Haeckel's embryo drawings.
The top row has been faked and
the four right-hand collumns are
all from the same taxonomic subclass.

What is wrong here? This is a basically a repeat of Haeckel's 1868 Recapitulation theory. Haeckel's hypothesis is that developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors. He "proved" this with a series of embryo drawings from different kinds of animals emphasizing their similarities.

Haeckel's series of pictures was first shown to be based on a fraud by Professor His in 1874. Professor His showed that  that Haeckel had added 3.5 mm to the head of Bischoff''s dog embryo, taken 2 mm off the head of Ecker's human embryo, doubled the length of the human posterior, and substantially altered the details of the human eye. Haeckel confessed the fraud, but by then it had taken on a life of its own.

Eminent evolutionists up until the present know that Haeckel's recapitulation theory is junk science. For example, Stephen Jay Gould, who invented the theory of punctuated equilibrium to try to explain away the problem that evolutionists could not locate any intermediate forms in the fossil record, said this about Haeckel's fraud: "We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks."

Fast forward to today. Dr. Donald Cronkite decided to use as his "Figure 8" Michael K. Richardson's picture from Scott Gilbert's book Developmental Biology, 6th edition. However, in Richardson's own review paper titled "There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development." Richardson says the following: 

Contrary to recent claims that all vertebrate embryos pass through a stage when they are the same size, we find a greater than 10-fold variation in greatest length at the tailbud stage. Our survey seriously undermines the credibility of Haeckel’s drawings, which depict not a conserved stage for vertebrates, but a stylised amniote embryo. In fact, the taxonomic level of greatest resemblance among vertebrate embryos is below the subphylum. The wide variation in morphology among vertebrate embryos is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a phyogenetically-conserved tailbud stage, and suggests that at least some developmental mechanisms are not highly constrained by the zootype.

This is basically saying the exact opposite from Cronkite's statement to 7th graders, that "these similarities suggest that these vertebrate species are related and share a common ancestor."

Now there are still some evolutionists who would spring to Cronkite's defense, even 142 years after the fraud was first hatched. For example, Steve Matheson in his blog entry "It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage", complains that some "propagandists and demagogues" are "shadow boxing with Haeckels' ghost" for political purposes! (I suppose that includes yours truly).

I would say the opposite, SHAME on Dr. Cronkite and all of his ilk for brazenly passing off Haeckel's hoax of recapitulation to our youth. It is sad that science teachers are forced to meekly accept what is passed off as truth within textbooks, or do not take the time to find out for themselves the accuracy of those textbooks.

Furthermore, this so-called Racapitulation theory has a very dubious heritage, as pointed out in the article by Dr. Henry Morris. Areas of science that quietly use the ideas of Racapitulation as their centerpiece include the Standard Geologic Column, Freudian Psychoanalysis, Modern Racism, and Abortionism. Abortionists say, "the fetus is still in its fish stage so you are just cutting up a fish" to convince young women that killing their child is acceptable!

Please examine your 7th grader's textbook and look for a Haeckel-type picture. If you find one, explain the truth to your child and to their science teacher. Creatures did not evolve based on their similarities, they were created by a wonderful God who demonstrates his love through their amazing diversity! For more information, see the book of Genesis in your Bible, and the ongoing and fantastic findings by modern-day creation scientists on websites like Creation Wiki

References

Cells and Heredity, Science Explorer series, 2005. Pearson Prentice-Hall.

Gilbert, Scott F. 2000. Developmental Biology. 6th edition. Sunderland, Massachusetts, Sinauer Associates.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 2000. Abscheulich! Atrocious! Natural History, March, 2000, p. 45.

Mattheson, Steve. 2010. It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part I, accessed 12/24/2010.

Recapitulation Theory, 2010. Wikipedia.

Rudd, Steve, Piltdown Embryo, accessed 12/24/2010.

Was Darwin the first to think up Evolution? 2009, accessed 12/24/2010.