How could genetic codes be so perfectly tuned?

This exquisitely designed system points not to a gradual, step-wise appearance from purely random events, but to creation by a living God!

Selections from from The Testimony of the Synthesases, by Timothy R. Stout.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 16, Number 2, March/April 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2010/CM15%2006%20low%20res.pdf)

Fig. 7 A DRT (Direct RNA Template)
model for the origin of coded translation.

Michael Yarus and his team of researchers ( 2009) did an extensive survey of the results of various experiments showing how RNA strings can naturally associate with particular amino acids.

They proposed (see his Fig. 7) that an RNA string could serve as a Direct RNA Template for assembling an amino acid string, thus functioning as a crude ribosome. Further, they proposed that, in time, this direct process evolved into the fully functioning ribosome with its indirect coding (i.e., usage of tRNAs, synthetases etc.).

There is a fundamental weakness in the approach proposed by Yarus et al. They assume that one can start with a simple code and gradually, step-by-step, modify it into a new one. However, codes do not change from one mapping to another in such a smooth manner. Once a code has been established, the products of that particular mapping will be all over the place, appearing at many locations and used for many unrelated purposes.

Therefore, even if an accidental mapping change (mutation) produced an incidental, isolated advantage, on the whole its adoption would result in a large number of system-wide errors. The lethal impact of the sheer number of such errors would tend to overwhelm any incidental advantage the modification might otherwise produce. Natural selection would thus select away from modification of an established code.

This exquisitely designed system points not to a gradual, step-wise appearance from purely random events, but to creation by a living God!

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

References (selected)

Yarus, M., J.J. Widmann, and R. Knight. 2009. RNA-amino acid binding: a stereochemical era for the genetic code. J. Mol. Evol, 69:406–429. http://www.springerlink.com/content/b418465308240147/fulltext.pdf

Messianic Jews may seek Israeli citizenship without discrimination

The Supreme Court of the State of Israel, on April 16, 2008, acknowledged the right of Messianic Jews (Jews who believe in Jesus) to immigrate Israel (aliyah). This landmark ruling is little known among Christians worldwide, but is a huge encouragement from the Lord that the end times are approaching!

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:25-26 that "a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved." Large numbers of Jews have put there faith in Jesus as the Messiah ever since his first coming. The Messianic Jewish movement of the past 150 years has helped Jews understand that when they commit their lives to Jesus, they do not stop being Jewish, but they have become fulfilled Jews.

However, Messianic Jews have suffered the persecution of other Jews within the State of Israel since its independence. This Supreme Court ruling in 2008 apparently was in reaction to violence committed on Messianic Jews, and recognizes that this persecution and discrimination is illegal. Please pray that this will opens doors for the gospel to reach more Jews in the land of  Israel!

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Here is more information, as Erin Roach reported in the Baptist Press article Israeli Supreme Court sides with Messianic Jews from April 21, 2008.

With the ruling, Messianic Jews may seek citizenship in Israel without religious discrimination, according to Jim Sibley, a professor at Criswell College in Dallas and a former missionary to Israel. Jewish believers had been excluded from the law of return by previous court rulings, including one in the 1980s declaring that if a Jew believed in Jesus as the Messiah, he was not to be considered Jewish. With the ruling, Sibley said, Messianic Jews may seek citizenship in Israel without religious discrimination.

It's really a huge ruling because the court apparently further ordered the Israeli Ministry of Interior to stop persecuting Jewish believers,” Sibley said. “Some of the very Orthodox Jewish sectors of society had taken positions in the Ministry of Interior and had been using their positions to revoke believers' citizenship, deny visas and generally harass not only Jewish believers in Jesus but also Christian workers in Israel."

The Supreme Court's decision should alleviate some of the pressure that Jewish believers and foreign Christian workers have felt in Israel, Sibley said, adding that he "can't help but believe" the ruling is related to a terrorist attack on the Messianic community that occurred in March, 2008.

In that incident, 15-year-old Ami Ortiz, whose parents are noted Messianic congregational leaders in Ariel, opened a bomb disguised as a gift delivered to his home. He suffered extensive damage to his body but is expected to recover after at least a year of treatment. Though a police investigation is ongoing, anti-missionary Orthodox Jews were among those originally suspected as perpetrators.

A Goldilocks Planet needs just the right Tides

Artist's concept of a large,
rocky extrasolar planet. 

Lots of planets surround other stars ... but the idea that we will find life when we find a planet at just the right distance is far too simplistic. Science Daily reported that “Tides can render the so-called ‘habitable zone’ around low-mass stars uninhabitable.” Astronomers at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam studied the effects of tides on planets around low-mass stars (the most numerous stars in the galaxy) and found that the lack of seasons, the increased heat and volcanism, and synchronous rotation (the same side always facing to the star) make them uncomfortable at best, and perhaps uninhabitable.

“I think that the chances for life existing on exoplanets in the traditional habitable zone around low-mass stars are pretty bleak, when considering tidal effects,” lead researcher Rene Heller remarked. “If you want to find a second Earth, it seems that you need to look for a second Sun.”

Marko comments: You won't find another Goldilocks Planet, because God created just one! Let's see, we need just the right distance from the star, just the right distance from the center of the galaxy, just the right tides, just the right temperature for liquid water, just the right amount of ultraviolet light, just the right protection from asteroids, just the right...

Those who insist on looking for this second Sun might as well look for someone else beside Jesus to save them, too. But sorry, there is no one who qualifies.

(Based on "Habitable Zones Constrained by Tide", Creation-Evolution Headlines, February 2011)

(also published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 16, Number 2, March/April 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2010/CM15%2006%20low%20res.pdf)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

What to do when another Christian hurts you... (from Dr Mike Milton)

Have you been hit by friendly fire? Are you the victim of a wound inflicted by someone you love? Genesis 50:15-21 instructs Christians on what to do when other Christians hurt them. Being a victim is not a good way to live because life cannot go forward when the clock has stopped at the point of your last betrayal. The power at work in the life of Joseph is what you need in order to get past this hurt. By embracing the pain that comes at him as a means of identification with Jesus Christ, you move from victim to victor...

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Walking Wounded

One second. One mistake. One firing of the missile in the midst of the war. The missile cannot come back. The weapon is now headed for you. And the one who fired it is on your side. It is war.

And this is not Baghdad or the Battle of the Bulge or Pork Chop Hill. I am speaking of the many walking wounded in the body of Christ who have been hurt by other believers, people who have been hit by the betrayal of a Christian

But this is no mistake. She meant to say those words. He meant to plot against you. They meant to bring you down. And you will never be the same. You will suffer with this for the rest of your life. You will not go back to any church. You will lick your wounds. Pain will possess you for the rest of your life. And over time the pain turns to bitterness.

Do you know anyone like that? Or is that your story? Are you the victim of a wound inflicted by someone you love? A victim?

It does not have to be that way. Remember the story of Joseph and how he said these words to his brothers as they stood before him:

“Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them (Genesis 50:15-21).

When the Clock Stops

I once sold insurance door to door in poor areas of Louisiana. One of my clients was a family that lived in an old house on the other side of the tracks. Every month I would go to collect the insurance money, and we would sit in their living room and talk. One day I noticed that the clock was wrong. It said nine o’clock when, in fact, it was noon. I said nothing. But I saw the same thing the next month and then the next month. Finally, I said something to the husband and wife. Tears came to their eyes. “That was the moment our boy died 10 years ago,” they told me. The clock had stopped in their lives.

The pain of friendly fire is like that. It can stop the clock in your heart. This happens to Christians whom other Christians hurt and who fail to identify their pain with Christ. The clock stops. They go through life, month after month, year after year, and often church after church, but the clock stopped in their lives way back when they were hurt. Today it is popular to be a victim, but being a victim is not a good way to live ecause life cannot go forward when the clock has stopped at the point of your last betrayal.

Yet I wonder: Are you living your life with the clock stopped?

There is a Way

There is another answer. There is a way to healing. But I warn you, it will involve another kind of pain — the pain of Christ’s cross. Christ’s cross will bring resurrection, and the new life He brings will also make the clock start ticking again.

This is what we see in Joseph’s ability to forgive his brothers after they literally ditched him. Joseph identified his pain with God. In God the pain was intended to bring blessing. Being hurt by his brothers made sense. The pain of false accusation made sense. The trial of unjust imprisonment was good. The years of separation from his father were good for him. He was saying with David, “Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil” (Psalm 90:15).

The power at work in the life of Joseph is what you need in order to get past this hurt. It is the power that was present in Paul when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). By embracing the pain that comes at him as a means of identification with Jesus Christ, Paul moves from victim to victor.

This is for anyone who is a believer hurt by another believer, for a loved one hurt by another loved one, for anyone feeling like a victim of another person, or maybe just feeling betrayed by life. In order for you to move from victim to victor in dealing with the pain of betrayal or suffering of any kind, drastic steps must be taken.

The hurt person, who is not embracing that pain as a means for God to do something in his life, is the person who is stuck and for whom the clock has stopped. He is not denying himself. In fact, the very thing he wants to do is feed his pain: “They hurt me, they said this about me, and I was offended.”

But Jesus says, “Take up your cross, follow Me, deny yourself, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

We want to think about cross-bearing as physical pain, and it is. We also want to think about taking up our cross as standing up for truth and maybe taking some hits for it, maybe even being a martyr for it. Throughout church history many have done so.

But the context of the cross is betrayal. The context of the cross is the pain of being hurt by those close to us.

Zechariah 13:6 speaks of “the wounds I received in the house of my friends.” This is the pain you may feel in your heart. This may be where you are living today.

God does not call us to live in distrust, but to live by faith in Christ. It is not that I implicitly trust all men; it is that I trust God in all situations. And this makes life sweet.

Will you say, “I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and share in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may rise again”? Will you believe that though “they” meant it for evil, God meant it for good? Will you go on and live this risen life that Christ offers you right now?

(excerpted version of Dr. Mike Milton's booklet Hit by Friendly Fire: What to Do When Christians Hurt, reposted from Ministry & Leadership, Spring/Summer 2011, Reformed Theological Seminary. The full booklet can be ordered at http://mindandheart.com/ProductDetails.aspx?a=1556359284)

God provides a new building for persecuted Bible students in Vietnam

Pastor Hong
Quang
Nguyen.

On Dec. 14, 2010, 100 police and a bulldozer gathered on the property of the Mennonite Bible School in Ho Chi Minh City. Police attacked Pastor Hong Quang Nguyen, the school's leader, then bulldozed the building as the students watched. The first students to graduate from the school had received their diplomas just days earlier.

Though the loss of the building was a setback for the school, Pastor Quang and his 22 remaining students decided to complete their training. Another pastor offered Pastor Quang land for a new school site about 25 miles from Ho Chi Minh City. Just days after the attack on their school, the students were at their new location, repairing an old building on the property and clearing land to build dorms and bathrooms. Classes resumed on Jan. 3, 2011. In between classes and studying, the students passed out 3,000 tracts to their new neighbors, and eight people received Christ.

Throughout the ordeal, the students have grown in their faith. A Christian worker from the region wrote, "All are determined to study and to fulfill their responsibility to the Lord. The event has been a great test of their faith, and it has made them unite together and decide to serve God to the end."

The building for the new Bible school was finished in March. The facility can house up to 50 students. The building includes a classroom/worship sanctuary, library, kitchen, dining room, rooms and nine dorm rooms.

Pastor Quang said the experience of losing the school has taught him and his students a lot about serving Christ. "We have decided to serve and to bear the cross of Jesus," he said.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, June 2011)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)