Do you feel that God has failed you?

Shattered Assumptions.... When expectations or “assumptions” are shattered, people tend to fall into a belief that God has failed them.

People, who were once confident and at ease with their surroundings, suddenly find themselves dealing with a natural disaster, an act of violence or harrowing event that has broken their sense of security and constancy. So broken is their sense of stability, that they develop what is called a trauma-worldview. They see life through lenses that anticipate bad things happening. They begin to project this into their present situations as well as their future.

Our inclination at times is to promise God’s protection from such events. We then leave individuals feeling even more shaken by the reality that God did not “protect” them from an affliction. At times we attempt to put ourselves in the position of explaining God’s ways (as if we could), thinking an explanation will erase the painfulness of the event. We are at times uncomfortable with God’s silence and lack of explanation, so we attempt our own.

How does the gospel speak into these moments? How do we have a gospel-centered hope without allowing our expectations to inform what that must look like? Hope is found not in the stability and security of life. It is not found in the positive illusions we might hold about our lives. Nor can we rely on the promise of an explanation that may possibly justify suffering. Our worldview is consistently threatened by the painful realities of existence, when it should be tied to the person of Jesus. Our goal needs to be to develop a worldview that is so bound in the character of Christ—so secure in a relationship with our Creator—that it cannot be shattered.

(selections from Julie Smith Lowe, Shattered Assumptions, Westminster Today, Summer 2011)

12 programs on national Turkish TV - the peace and healing of Jesus!

"One of our workers, Ali, is producing a series of 12 television shows that will provide Bible-based solutions to prevalent cultural problems in Turkey such as: brokenness in families and marriages, distortions of honor and shame, and abuse.

Millions of Muslims want peace - both politically and personally. They want a peaceful world for themselves and for their families. They long to speak and to act freely without fear of punishment or of retribution.

Ali is offering Turkish Muslims a cultural counseling ministry that is similar to what Focus on the Family provides: Good solid Biblical advice about all kinds of emotional and family matters.

Politics has not provided this...It can't. Jihad has not and will not provide this.

Amazingly, this program will point the way to Jesus Christ and get played on national television! As Ali presents a Biblical view exposing and confronting these hidden issues, I believe many people will discover the peace and love of Jesus Christ and be freed from shame, abuse, and fear. Broadcasts like this have opened doors to those who seek the truth and long for inner peace. The broadcasting channel has had tremendous responses from those who desire to know the truth about Jesus and need real answers. And when they discover the truth of Christ, their lives are transformed!

(from a Christian prayer letter, May 2011)

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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!

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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!

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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)

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