| 2023 | 2022 |
| 10/1/2023 | There are between 10,000 and 15,000 species of orchids. While you surely are not familiar with all of them, it sounds strange to talk about orchid behavior. This huge variety of orchids offers a multitude of different flower shapes, colors and sizes. Each unique shape, color and size is perfectly suited to the bees, butterflies, bats, moths, flies and birds that are involved in that orchid’s pollination. Those orchids that use birds as pollinators have no scent. Instead, they offer the brightest of colors, appealing to the birds’ strongest sense. Evolutionists call this “co-evolution.” However, giving it a name doesn’t explain it. How did these orchids know that the bird’s strongest sense is sight? And how were these orchids able to perform genetic recombination on themselves so that they could develop their bright colors? No, giving something a scientific-sounding name doesn’t make naturalistic claims any more scientific. Or consider the bee orchid. It offers a flower that looks like a female bee. The purpose here is to attract male bees to a position that will load them with pollen. How can it be scientific to suggest that a plant purposely restructured itself to fool bees into pollinating it? Our Magnificent Creator God has purposely made it impossible to explain the creation without Him. He did this not simply so that we would see that He is real. His purpose is much greater. God seeks a personal relationship with you and has made that possible through the saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. It is to Christ that He would ultimately draw our attention. |
| 9/30/2023 | Honeydew is one of the favorite foods of ants. There are a number of insects, including thorn bugs and aphids, who consume so much honeydew that they cannot digest it all. These insects are designed so that ants can milk them for the excess honeydew, just the way a farmer obtains milk from a cow. Many species of ants will milk the honeydew-collecting insect by stroking its abdomen with its antennae. The tree hopper actually slows its secretion of excess honeydew to the milking ant so that the ant may drink his honeydew “fresh from the cow” so to speak. Some ants construct clay pens and shelters in which they enclose certain species of aphids, just as a farmer keeps his herd. Like the farmer, the ants move the aphids to better honeydew feeding sites when necessary. They also care for the aphid eggs during the winter. Herding ants are even better able to protect a young tree hopper than its parents. It is not unusual for a tree hopper parent to turn her young over to herding ants because they can do more for the young insect than she can. Such complex relationships between creatures points to a God who is both a Magnificent Creator God and Teacher—even to insects!!! |
| 9/17/2023 | You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! Our Magnificent Creator God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
| 9/16/2023 | How many ants are there in the world? No one has actually counted them all or asked them to fill out little ant census forms. However, scientists have estimated that there are about 10 million billion ants in the world, waiting for you to have a picnic. That’s more ants than there are mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians combined. God made so many ants because ants are important housekeepers for the earth. Ants, not earthworms, turn most of the world’s soil, drain it, and enrich it. Ants dispose of 90% of the corpses of small dead animals. As the world’s gardeners, ants spread and plant more seeds than any other creature. Like bees, ants have a sophisticated society, which includes workers, nurses, soldiers, hunters, farmers, and even builders. Each of these different classes have specialized organs for their work. The soldier ants of one species are walking bombs. They are loaded with poison and literally explode when under attack, spraying poison on their enemies. Army ants in Central and South America march across the countryside in a line that can be nearly 50 feet long. The solid column sweeps along, flushing out even small animals, as it looks for food. The huge variety of living things around us represents more than simply variety. That variety carefully includes creatures to do every job that needs to be done to maintain life on earth. This, in itself, is a witness to both the creativity and wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/15/2023 | If your measuring stick is inaccurate, you could end up with too much wallpaper or too little. If your map tells you that your destination is 200 miles away when it’s really only 50 miles away, you might drive right past it. If your map of the universe is inaccurate and stars are a lot closer than you expect, you will arrive at the wrong age for the universe. Most science textbooks solemnly teach that the universe is 10 to 20 billion years old. A distant galaxy in the Virgo cluster is one of the primary measuring sticks used by astronomers to figure out the distance of other objects in space. Ultimately these distances are used to compute the age of the universe. Recently, though, astronomers were finally able to see individual stars in this distant cluster. Using a new, high-resolution camera, astronomers saw stars that are very much like stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. Since they know how bright these stars are, they were able to check their computations on how far away the measuring-stick galaxy is. Instead of the expected 100 million light-years, their new figures told them that the galaxy was only 50 million light-years away. This means that the universe might only be half as old as they thought. The lesson for us in this is that the millions and billions of years many scientists talk about are mere speculation. Many measuring sticks for the age of the universe are available, and many of them support an age in the biblical range of only thousands of years. The only source for the age of this universe is our Magnificent Creator God himself!!! |
| 9/14/2023 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of a Magnificent Creator God and not mindless, natural accidents. |
| 9/13/2023 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109 degrees 23 minutes and an acute angle of 70 degrees 23 minutes. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Magnificent Creator God. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder God has given them so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness! |
| 9/12/2023 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 9/11/2023 | The jellyfish almost seems like a creature from a bad science fiction movie. Around 500 species of jellyfish, ranging in size from small marbles to several feet across, inhabit the world’s oceans. Jellyfish have several mouths and will try to eat anything, including each other. Thankfully, the stings of most jellyfish have no effect on human beings. The jellyfish lives two very different lives, each with different lifestyles and methods of reproduction. The familiar jellyfish form is a swimming lifestyle in which the creatures reproduce sexually. However, in another phase of their life, they are called polyps. In the polyp stage, they look like small anemones, cling to rocks and reproduce by cloning. Jellyfish cannot move fast enough to chase prey. However, careful study of jellyfish swimming patterns shows that jellyfish don’t swim at random. The pattern in which they swim produces the greatest mathematical likelihood of encountering prey. Biologically jellyfish have only two internal organs: a stomach and sex organs. Although evolutionists tell us jellyfish were among the earliest creatures, some of them have sophisticated brain functions that – outside of jellyfish – are found only in mammals and human beings! The jellyfish is a tribute to God’s creativity and imagination. Even though the jellyfish appears to be one of the simplest forms of life on Earth, it is also a mathematically precise hunter. Even this living bag of lukewarm Jell-O praises our Magnificent Creator God through its existence. |
| 9/10/2023 | Some people have the green thumb in their family. Others may complain that they fail with plants because plants don’t tell them when they need care. Of course, most people can do well with family pets, who are enthusiastic about letting their needs be known. Now scientists have learned that plants do indeed cry out when they need attention. We just haven’t heard them because the sounds made by a thirsty plant are about five times higher-pitched than we can hear. But scientists with tiny, specialized microphones have heard corn plants calling for water. During their study, researchers learned that plants make a great deal of noise. Corn leaves and stalks make noises as they slide against each other during growth. We have all heard the sound of plant leaves rattling in the wind. Corn stalks also make noise as they bend in the wind. However, another sound was heard when the corn didn’t have enough water. It was a high-pitched popping noise. Plants have water tubes in them that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the leaves. Water flows up these tubes under tension. When there is not enough water, the tension becomes too great and the tubes fracture. The popping is the sound of those tubes fracturing. The result of fractured tubes is a wilted plant. When water is restored, the tubes refill, the popping noises stop, and the plant again looks healthy. The purpose of this research was to learn when to water crops and how much water they need. Now that we have learned how plants communicate, crops can tell farmers when to water! Aren’t we blessed to have a Magnificent Creator God that took care of so much minute detail!!! |
| 9/9/2023 | Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for our Magnificent Creator God’s complete attention!!! |
| 9/8/2023 | How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements that we find in the plant and animal kingdoms that our Magnificent Creator God has designed!!! |
| 9/7/2023 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by our Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error. This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty! |
| 9/5/2023 | Most of us are familiar with the body’s response to foreign tissue. Transplant patients must be carefully matched and then patients still must be given powerful drugs to prevent destruction of the transplanted tissue. Our bodies’ immune system identifies tissue that’s not its own and then tries to destroy that tissue. As we have learned more about the immune system, doctors began asking themselves why a pregnant mother’s body doesn’t reject the foreign tissue of the baby growing inside her. The answer to this mystery is not fully understood, but research has suggested some answers. From conception the unborn child is a genetically unique individual. Researchers think that the most important protection the unborn child has is the trophoblast. This tissue, known as the caul, seals the growing infant from its mother. However, the trophoblast itself develops from the same cells as the infant. So why doesn’t the mother’s immune system attack? It appears that under normal conditions the trophoblast is a special set of cells that the body cannot identify as foreign. In addition, the trophoblast makes cells that encourage the mother’s immune system to protect it. Scientists now believe that this amazing feature may actually be provided by the father’s genetic information. In effect, the baby, with the help of the father, immunizes the mother’s system so that it doesn’t reject the baby! So, even before birth, the mother nurtures and the father protects the child. What a Magnificent Creator God we have!!! |
| 9/4/2023 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures. |
| 9/3/2023 | In a clever scheme of self-protection, the more poisonous the male rattlebox moth is, the more prized he is by the female rattlebox moth. In the caterpillar stage the male moth favors the pods of certain legumes. These pods contain a powerful poison that seems to have no effect on the caterpillar. After the caterpillar has become a moth and it’s time for mating, the male releases a scent produced by the poison. Those who have more poison in their bodies release a stronger scent, while those with little poison release only a weak scent. Female rattlebox moths prefer males with a strong scent. During mating the male coats the eggs with some of the poison, making them unpalatable to predators, like ladybugs, who might eat the eggs. So the more poison a male has, the better protected the female’s eggs will be. Studies have shown that female rattlebox moths will ignore males that have collected no poison. Likewise, the male of the queen butterfly species collects another plant poison in his system. This poison is produced by plants for protection against insects. The butterfly doesn’t attack the plant; rather he drinks the poison from already injured plants. Here, too, the female queen butterfly favors those males with the most poison. It appears that human beings are not the only creatures who go to the drug store to get needed medicines. Our Magnificent Creator God has provided the animal world with their own drug store and the knowledge of how to use the chemicals He has provided!!! |
| 9/2/2023 | Fireflies may help light the way to new medical breakthroughs. The gentle glow of a firefly on a summer evening is produced by the chemical luciferase. The firefly has a gene with the code that makes this chemical. When that gene is added to the genetic information of other plants or animals, the cells begin to glow harmlessly. Researchers have been using the firefly gene to test their ability to add genetic information to a cell. When human heart arteries become clogged, a medicine called TPA is among the treatments doctors use. TPA is a natural clot-dissolving protein that helps prevent heart attacks. The problem is, without a continuous supply of TPA, the artery may reclog. It would help if the artery could make its own TPA 24 hours a day. Since TPA is a natural protein for which there is a genetic code, researchers wanted to know if genetic information could be added to artery cells. To find out, they injected dogs with the genetic code for luciferase. If genetic information could be added to the cells through this method, they would actually see the results in the glowing tissue. Tissue samples taken three days later did, in fact, have the distinctive glow of the firefly proving that the method works. They warn that several years of research lie ahead before artery cells may be able to dissolve their own clots. Those glowing fireflies that delight children and adults show God’s design in the creation in an unexpected way. The chemical that makes the glow is proving to be an important tool of medical science. What a Magnificent Creator God we have to preplan our needs!!! |
| 9/1/2023 | At first glance, jellyfish may not look like much of a creation. Many are quite beautiful. However, most jellyfish simply look like blobs of jelly, so fragile that what might be a minor blow to one of us could prove fatal to them. There are around 500 species of jellyfish. They live everywhere in the oceans – from the surface down to great depths. Some are as small as a BB. The largest jellyfish is the lion’s mane, which can grow to seven feet in diameter and have tentacles 200 feet long. Despite their apparent simplicity, these insubstantial creatures make their living by capturing and eating fish and crustaceans that could easily tear them apart. To accomplish this seemingly impossible task, the jellyfish trails out its long thread-like tentacles. Each tentacle can have millions of capsules loaded with tiny harpoons. Once touched, the tentacles fire, injecting several deadly toxins. If enough toxin is injected, the victim’s heart stops. If not enough of this poison is injected, another toxin finds its way to the brain where it stops respiration. Yet another toxin bursts red blood cells, disrupting the circulatory system. Thankfully, only a few dozen of the hundreds of species of jellyfish can hurt human beings. Imagine trying to design a creature that is not much more than a bag of Jell-O that can capture and subdue much larger and more powerful creatures. The jellyfish may look simple. However, its specialized design for a seemingly impossible task makes it an elegant witness to our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 8/31/2023 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm! |
| 8/30/2023 | Many people have been taught that evolution is science and creation is religion. However, the origins debate is really a debate between two religions. According to the evolutionist’s own rules of science, evolution is not good science. Consider the claims of evolution in view of what science knows today. Life has never been seen to develop from nonliving materials. Yet, evolutionists say it did. Mutations, said by evolutionists to have created all the kinds of living things, have never been seen to produce one creature that was more complex or better able to survive. The moon has moonquakes, a magnetic field and internal heat. These are all indications that it is far younger than evolutionists care to believe. Geological strata were at one time sediments in water – floodwaters. Evolutionists believe that the multiple layers of sedimentary rock were laid down one after another by local floods with millions of years between each flood. If that is true, how is it that these strata are often found showing the lower strata blending into the strata above it? If language evolved, why are the most ancient languages the most complex? If religions evolved, why do the most ancient forms of religion worship one God – a Magnificent Creator God – while later forms of the same religions have many gods – gods who are much more like human beings? Many more examples show that only the Bible’s account of history makes sense in view of what we know. |
| 8/29/2023 | The world is a frightening place without God. This fear can be seen today in fears that modern people often confuse with science. Several years ago stories of gloom and doom about a greenhouse heating of the earth were starting to fill the media. The people at Creation Moments looked at the scientific basis for these claims. They wanted to know if the greenhouse warming of the earth was a true threat or just another fear of a godless people. They then published the conclusion that the thin and conflicting evidence for greenhouse warming most likely came from the heat island effect of growing cities around some of the temperature measuring sites. Knowing the elegance with which God designed everything in creation, creationists suspected that God probably designed the earth with built-in thermostats that help keep it from warming up too much. When the Pacific Ocean warms more than normal, it sends increasing amounts of water vapor into the air. If heating continues, the water vapor will actually cause the heating to increase until vapor is forced higher into the atmosphere, creating icy cirrus clouds. These clouds reflect enough incoming sunlight to shut down the temperature increase and return things to normal. We are called to be good stewards of the earth. We can be good stewards in joyful service, freed from the fears that afflict those who don’t know God. What a Magnificent Creator we have in our God!! |
| 8/28/2023 | Do you know how to handle a sailboat? If you had to sail to a destination that was not exactly downwind, would you be able to do it? Unlike most jellyfish, velella does not merely drift with the wind. Velella has a triangular sail. However, unlike some jellyfish with sails, velella‘s sail doesn’t simply catch the wind and move velella along with it. Velella‘s triangular sail has an S-shaped base so that it can stand up to winds from any direction. The sail is set on top of velella‘s body at an angle to its length. This makes velella a biological oddity – because its body is not symmetrical. This asymmetry is not without purpose. The unusual body design of this jellyfish allows it to sail as much as 60° off the direction of the wind. This is what sailors call a broad reach. Some velellas have their sails tilted to the right, allowing them to sail up to 60° to the right of downwind. Others have their sails tilted to the left, allowing them to sail up to 60° left of downwind. What’s more, velellas can change their angle of sailing by extending or retracting their tentacles in the water. When scientists noticed that velella‘s body was asymmetrical, they immediately looked for a purpose behind the design. Even though many scientists will not recognize our Magnificent Creator God, they understand enough to realize that nothing in the creation is without purpose or design. So while many deny the Creator, they still recognize the pattern of His handiwork! |
| 8/27/2023 | Many textbooks tell young people today that birds are modified reptiles. Suppose, they say, that millions of years ago the scales on some reptiles began to fray along the edges. In time, they say, the frayed scales turned into feathers and birds were born. The elegance and beauty of the feather make this story hard to believe. Can sticking a feather on a lizard produce a peacock? The bird’s feather is only a small part of the complete flying system of the bird. Even with very careful planning and redesigning, a reptile doesn’t have what it takes. A bird needs massive breast muscles for flight. In some birds, 30% of the body weight of the bird is breast muscle. By comparison, in humans breast muscles are only about 1% of body weight. A bird also needs an extremely high metabolism and blood pressure to deliver the energy those muscles need for flight. Birds have a higher metabolism than any other creature; they also have the necessary high blood pressure. Finally, as is well known, birds need light skeletons. The man-o’-war has a wingspan of seven feet. But its entire skeleton weighs only a few ounces—less than its feathers! Even the most clever rebuilding of a reptile cannot produce a bird. In fact, birds have very little in common with reptiles. The entire being of the bird, from body to brain, has been specially designed for flight by a Creator who clearly knows everything there is to know about flight!!! |
| 8/26/2023 | While the Bible teaches us that sex is a wonderful gift of God, evolutionists believe that sexual reproduction should not have evolved. According to evolutionists, if sexual reproduction were to develop, evolution is supposed to get rid of it. To make matters worse, immobile plants use sexual reproduction. This creates a problem in transferring the male genes to the female for fertilization. Just to confound things even more, God uses insects and even mammals to transfer the pollen. Since evolutionists believe that plants were around for many millions of years before animals, evolutionists have yet another problem. The European family of the Arum lilies attracts beetles and flies. When one of the insects lands on a flower, he finds a slick, oil-coated surface and ends up sliding down into a chamber filled with small hairs. Imprisoned, he finds a sweet sap that makes good eating. While he is gorging himself on the sap and getting sticky in the process, the male part of the flower showers him with pollen. The next day, the sticky, pollen-coated insect finds that the doors to his prison are open. So he flies off to another flower to unwittingly deliver his load of pollen! It sounds like science fiction to say that a flower figured out how to do this. And it certainly doesn’t sound very scientific to say that nobody designed and made this complex arrangement. As we learn more about these arrangements in nature, it becomes even more clear that an all-wise Magnificent Creator God designed these beautiful, symbiotic relationships between different members of the living kingdom!!! |
| 8/25/2023 | One would never expect to find any insect sharing living arrangements with a spider. That’s why scientists were amazed to find a tiny fly in the rain forests of Central America who shares both room and board with a spider! The fly spends most of his time on the back of the golden web spider, who does not seem to object. This spider does not deal with its victims in the same way most spiders do. When a large insect gets caught in the tough web of the spider, the golden web spider injects the victim with digestive juices to prepare it for eating. The fly keeps track of meal preparations from the spider’s back. Just before the meal is liquefied to the spider’s satisfaction, the fly buzzes over and drinks its fill in a few seconds. By the time the spider approaches lunch, the fly is back napping on the spider. Both the spider and the fly are designed with special features to make this most unlikely arrangement work. If the golden web spider’s eating habits were like most spiders’, there would be no liquefied meal for the fly. The fly itself has a mouth that is specially designed to allow it to drink a full meal in seconds. This helps keep him out of the spider’s way. How can a spider and a fly live together? God can design a solution to any problem. Why design an arrangement between a spider and a fly anyway? So that we would know there is a Magnificent Creator God and that He can meet any challenge! There is nothing you cannot take to Him in the name of His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. |
| 8/24/2023 | Respect for the name Thomas Jefferson reaches far beyond the United States and far beyond the English language. By the time Jefferson was 14, he could read four languages. He later learned three more. Jefferson’s legacy goes far beyond his accomplishments in law and government. He also made his mark in the fields of mathematics, architecture, medicine, agriculture, literature, education, music and science. He earned three doctorates. And he served as president of the American Philosophical Society, America’s leading scientific organization of the time, for nearly 20 years. One might think that Jefferson would have accepted the evolutionary ideas that were being circulated then by such people as Charles Darwin’s grandfather. However, while Jefferson was a deist rather than a Christian, he spoke and wrote against evolutionary ideas and in favor of a Creator. He based his argument that belief in a Creator is more scientific than evolution on the precise and interrelated design that is visible everywhere in the creation. We thank our Magnificent Creator God that His handiwork is so clear in the creation that one does not even have to be a Christian to know that He is The Creator. God’s most earnest desire for all is that seeing this much, we might be drawn to His forgiveness in Jesus Christ. |
| 8/23/2023 | The yellow-and-black striped archer fish shops among the insects that land on branches overhanging his pond in the peaceful waters of the East Indies. Sometimes he will wait under a branch until something that would make a good lunch lands on it. When the archer fish finds a tasty-looking insect, he shoots an accurately aimed stream of water at his prey, knocking the insect into the water. Before the insect has a chance to recover, the archer fish has eaten him and is looking for dessert. The archer fish has a deep groove in his mouth. When he places his tongue against this groove, he ends up with a blow tube that is about 1/16-inch in diameter. Compressing his gills forces pressurized water through the blow pipe. The rounded tip of the archer fish’s tongue acts as a valve so the fish can shoot a few small bursts or one long stream of water at his prey. The archer fish seldom misses if his prey is within four feet. This simple but elegant arrangement is testimony to a wise and skillful Creator. Neither mindless chance evolution nor any fish could be smart enough to design this system. Nor could any fish redesign his normal mouth tissues into this unique tool. Here we see that our Magnificent Creator God even cares about providing the needs of a fish. We know that He cares even more about our lives! In fact, He has said so! |
| 8/22/2023 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was our Magnificent Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language to praise our God and Savior and to tell others who He is and what He has done! |
| 8/21/2023 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! Our Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health. |
| 8/20/2023 | “And the LORD God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It’s behind your refrigerator and under your bed. It’s part of the air you breathe. While dust is common, it’s not commonplace at all. Much of the dust in our everyday lives is nothing more than tiny particles of skin, clothing, carpeting – just pieces of everyday life floating in the air. Studies of dust particles reveal that most dust is soil. However, a second common dust – even a thousand miles from the sea – is salt, driven into the wind by the waves. This salt helps form the clouds that bring us rain. The next most common forms of natural dust are volcanic eruptions and forest fires. Transatlantic winds pick up the dust of the Sahara and sweep it across the ocean where enough of it lands in Miami to sometimes give the rain a light pink color. Not only does your home have dust from all over the world, there’s probably also some from outer space. Ten thousand tons of disintegrating meteorites and comets rain down on the Earth every year. You can even identify some of this dust by running a magnet through the dust in a rain gutter. Most of the magnetic particles that stick to the magnet are probably from space. In addition, some dust is alive, made up of pollen, fungus spores and even dormant bacteria, hoping to land on a good place to grow. Dust reminds us that the world is smaller than we think and that it won’t last forever. Are you ready for the next world? All your preparations have been made by Jesus Christ. Find out in the Bible what our Magnificent Creator God has done for you today. |
| 8/19/2023 | Spider silk begins as a liquid protein made by silk glands on the spider’s abdomen. Spiders make many kinds of silk for different uses. As the liquid silk is forced through the spider’s spinnerets, it begins to dry. The spinnerets pull and stretch the silk, creating just the right kind of silk for the spider’s use. Though the result seems thin and weak to us, ounce for ounce, spider silk is stronger than steel. Web-building spiders make two types of silk for their traps. The basic structure of the web is made of strong, nonsticky silk. Then the spider adds a sticky, elastic silk to trap its prey. Some webs are irregular, others are flat and sheet-like, while still others are shaped like funnels. All of us have admired the beautiful orb web. However, spiders also have many other ways in which they use their silk. The ogre-faced spider makes a net that it throws around its intended victim. The European water spider builds its web underwater. It stores its air supply in the web. The lasso spider twirls a single strand of silk over its head. A tiny drop of sticky silk at the end of the lasso captures its prey when the lasso is thrown. Probably the most creative use of silk is by the young of some species. When they hatch, they produce long loops of silk that catch the wind and send them floating off to new places. The spider’s skill in producing and using silk had to come from Someone wiser and more clever than the spider. Clearly the spider has been well-equipped and instructed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 8/18/2023 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by our Magnificent Creator God allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following the Lord’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own. |
| 8/17/2023 | Squirrels often seem to run about without any purpose. However, a naturalist in the State of Maine recently discovered that the squirrel’s activities are well planned and efficient. It was a cold January day when the naturalist was watching a red squirrel who seemed to be nibbling on a sugar maple. Then the squirrel would run to a tree where some of the sap had leaked out and lap at it with his tongue. The naturalist knew that conventional wisdom said it was too early to tap trees for sugar. He also knew that the sap from the trees is 98 percent water and could not provide enough energy to keep the squirrel going in cold weather. Becoming more curious, he decided to study the squirrels’ activity in detail. He discovered that the red squirrels were systematically tapping the sugar maples with a peculiar bite into the tree. Each bite went through the outer and inner bark and into the xylem where the sap runs. The squirrels were then allowing the running sap to dry until the sugar content was more than 55 percent. Not only were squirrels tapping just the maples, they only tapped them when the weather was right for the sap to run. The mad running up and down the trees actually followed a careful daily schedule of tree visitations that could include over 70 trees! Could it be that humans learned from squirrels to tap sugar maples? Whatever the answer to that question, we know that it was our Magnificent Creator God Himself Who taught the squirrel the processing and use of this sugary winter treat! |
| 8/16/2023 | The founders of modern science, on the whole, believed in the Creator. The methods they developed were based upon the truth that the creation is voluntary. This means that God was not confined to what we have later defined as “scientific laws.” God could make anything He wanted in any way He wanted. Science cannot be done from the philosopher’s easy chair. Scientists must go out into the field and study how nature works. When science follows this path, it is open to astonishing discoveries. One recent unexpected discovery was the hot water vents deep below the ocean’s surface. Where the earth’s crust has split apart, hot water gushes out. This water reaches temperatures hot enough to, say, cause a piece of paper to burst into flame. Only the tremendous pressure more than a mile below the waves keeps the water in liquid form. It was in this environment that scientists made an even more amazing discovery. They found bacteria that could live in the almost 700 degree water. These amazing creatures find the normal, sea level boiling point of water to be so cold they can barely survive. Scientists are still trying to learn how these creatures live at temperatures that would destroy the normal biochemistry of life. Each new discovery tells us a little more about the work of our wonderful Magnificent Creator God. That’s what science was originally intended to do. Keep that in mind when you hear someone say that belief in the Magnificent Creator makes doing science impossible!!! |
| 8/15/2023 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, our Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. |
| 8/14/2023 | Many plants and animals disguise themselves as something they are not in the hope of protecting themselves. However, a true master of disguise must have many disguises. The tiger swallowtail offers no less than three disguises as it grows through its various stages toward adulthood. The newly hatched larva looks for all the world like a bird dropping. This appearance makes the larva of no interest to birds that might otherwise eat it. Three molts later the caterpillar has turned green to match the leaves on which it feeds. In case he is spotted by some birds looking for a nice fat caterpillar for lunch, the caterpillar also has two large spots on its head that look like the eyes of a snake. Birds who are interested in caterpillars usually try to stay as far from snakes as possible. Finally, in the pupal stage, the tiger swallowtail has again radically altered its appearance. The pupa now looks like nothing more than just another broken twig on a tree trunk. The immature tiger swallowtail’s bag of disguises reflects a great deal of knowledge about the behavior of those creatures that threaten it. Each of its three disguises uses a different method to fool those birds that would be interested in the larva. Each disguise has the same specific goal. This master of disguise is no accident of biology. Our Magnificent Creator God’s purpose in making Himself evident in the creation is ultimately aimed at bringing each of us into a relationship with Himself. That relationship is based on the forgiveness of our sin through His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 8/13/2023 | It was first discovered in 1855, but many scientists debated its existence for another 50 years. Once its existence was finally proven to everyone’s satisfaction, it was another 50 years before science had any tools to begin studying it. Finally, in the late 1980s, scientists began to learn a little about the secrets of one of the tiniest, yet most amazing structures in the body. At the back of the eye, between the deepest layer of the retina and the cells beneath it, lies a tiny moat made up of about 10 drops of a mysterious fluid. The entire moat is thinner than a sheet of cellophane. It seems that the clear fluid in the moat serves the surrounding light-sensing tissues of the eye in place of blood, bringing in nutrients and carrying away waste. It also transports light-sensitive chemicals needed by the light-detecting cells in the eye. In addition, it seems to glue the retina in place. More than that, the moat is rich in a growth factor. This fact makes scientists believe that the gel may also be important to repairing injuries to the retina, keeping the cells of the retina young and active, as well as helping in the growth of new cells. As one researcher said, the more they study this tiny structure, the more unexpected abilities they find – something like a bottomless suitcase. Charles Darwin, who didn’t even know about the moat, was right when he said that it was impossible to believe that natural selection could have produced the eye. As Christians we believe that only Our Magnificent Creator God could have produced the eye!!! |
| 8/12/2023 | “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” We’ve all heard this familiar saying. In the case of the sun’s fire, scientists expect to find not smoke but tiny particles called neutrinos. The problem is, most of those neutrinos are missing. It was once thought that the sun’s heat was produced as it’s powerful gravity caused it to collapse in on itself. But as the theory of evolution became popular, this theory fell out of favor. Those who promoted evolution knew that their theory was more believable if they said the sun was millions or billions of years old. However, if the sun’s heat came from gravity collapse, it could not possibly be that old. So when scientists learned about nuclear energy, they proposed the theory that the sun’s energy comes from nuclear forces. This would give them their billions of years. The problem is, the sun’s nuclear engine should be turning out a large number of neutrinos. Scientists find only about one-third to one-fourth of the neutrinos that should be there. This mystery is so troubling that scientists have changed their theories about how the sun produces its energy every year or two over the last 25 years! Some of them admit that they really don’t know how the sun produces its energy. The sun is a vital blessing to us. And here we see another blessing, for the sun also keeps us humble. Our Magnificent Creator God has so wonderfully created the sun that even our best scientific minds can’t figure out how it works!!! |
| 8/11/2023 | The strange and nasty plant called witchweed is found mainly in Africa and Asia, but some has been reported in North America as well. This parasitic plant can prevent crop plants from producing yields and is said to be responsible for intensifying the results of famine in Ethiopia. Not long after germination, witchweed sends an enzyme “feeler” through the soil around it to find nearby roots. If the enzyme finds a root system, it will digest a few of the cells on the root surface. The damaged roots actually help the witchweed by sending out a chemical response that confirms their presence to the witchweed. The witchweed then grows an attachment organ to penetrate the neighbor’s root system. However, witchweed cannot penetrate many root systems. If attachment is not made within four days, the witchweed grows aimlessly and dies in less than a week. If the witchweed successfully attaches to a neighbor’s root system, witchweed can enjoy a long and full life, being fed by its neighbor’s roots. In fact, witchweed changes the hormones produced by its neighbor so that the neighbor’s root system grows ever larger at the expense of the stem growth of the victim. While the victim may live its normal span, it will not be allowed enough strength to reproduce. Witchweed is no simple plant. We learn from the witchweed that our Magnificent Creator God’s unlimited imagination not only created some very strange living things, but also created some unique solutions to providing a means of living for them. |
| 8/10/2023 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Magnificent Creator God. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. |
| 8/9/2023 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures were not designed by our Magnificent Creator God Himself! |
| 8/8/2023 | One of the spider’s virtues is that it loves to eat flies. However, not all spiders catch flies in their webs. The jumping spider stalks its prey until, like a tiny tiger, it is close enough to pounce. Rather than defining its territory with a web, the jumping spider takes its territory with it in a manner of speaking. Wherever the jumping spider is becomes its territory, When one jumping spider encounters another, they wave their legs at each other, warning each other to back off. Herein lies the tale of how one species of fruit fly is able to outsmart the spider. Unlike most fruit flies, this particular species has stripes on its wings. When it waves its wings over its head, it looks something like a jumping spider declaring its territory. When stalked by a jumping spider, the fly is able to convince the spider that it’s another jumping spider protecting its territory. Researchers have discovered why this trick works even though the fly doesn’t look much like a spider. The spider’s response to the pattern is pre-wired into its brain and is triggered by certain cells in its eyes. These cells are only activated by a display of the pattern. The spider automatically reacts to the pattern. All the fly has to do is fake the pattern and it’s safe! The fruit fly’s strategy requires a sophisticated knowledge of the jumping spider’s nervous system as well as its behavior. It’s safe to say that no fruit fly was able to create this strategy. It could have been authored only by the Magnificent Creator God who created them both. |
| 8/7/2023 | Over the last couple of centuries many Bible scholars have developed a skeptical approach to the Bible. Their treatment of the Bible as nothing more than a human document stems from their belief in evolution. According to them, Christianity has evolved from earlier religions just as humans evolved. As a result, critics reject the idea that the Bible is God’s inerrant, inspired, trustworthy Word. Because they hold this low view of the Bible, they believe that they have found many errors in the Bible over the years. At one time they said that the Hittites mentioned in the Old Testament never existed. They said that ancient biblical writers invented these people so that Israel could make up pretend victories over them. Eventually the Hittites were discovered, one of the first evidences being hard-to-ignore six-foot-tall jars! Over the years these critics have been consistently proven wrong by new discoveries. Likewise, critics have said that the Israelites could not have entered Canaan when the Old Testament says they did. They reason that because the Old Testament mentions the Ammonites, which critics said didn’t live in Canaan until later, the Bible’s dating is in error. However, in the summer of 1989, biblical archaeologists proved that the Ammonites were in Canaan well before the Bible’s date for the exodus. Again Bible critics have been proven wrong. As one biblical archaeologist wrote, “As usual the absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence.” When the Bible says something is true, there is no question of its truth. The Bible truly is the inerrant, inspired, trustworthy Word of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 8/6/2023 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how our Magnificent Creator God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of a Creator and not mindless, natural accidents!!! |
| 8/5/2023 | For many, the existence of so much ice on Antarctica is a grave cause for concern, as they have been told that climate change will cause a lot of this ice to melt and cause the sea level to rise. The worry is that many of the world’s great cities, and many small island nations, could disappear as the Antarctic melts. So why did God make such a troublesome continent which could precipitate the end of the world? Remember that the topography of the world is not the way it was originally created. We have explained previously that there was likely just one main pre-Flood continent, which we call Rodinia. This continent split up during the Flood. The massive deposits of fossil fuels known to exist on the southernmost continent are evidence of pre-Flood forests, probably populated with animals. Every time ice breaks off from an Antarctic glacier, the media worry about flooding – yet God has promised not to flood the world again, nor to bring seasons to an end. Despite seeming to be a homogeneous repository for the 70% of the Earth’s fresh water, locked in as ice, there are considerable variations in climate between different parts of the continent. For every place where ice is melting and breaking up, there are parts where the ice cap gets thicker. Our Magnificent Creator God has all this in balance for His own purposes, and we can be sure He will keep all His promises!!! |
| 8/4/2023 | Humpbacks are among the largest whales in the world. A typical humpback weighs about 40 tons and begins its breach deep down in the ocean. Imagine the acceleration required to get this enormous animal out of the water and into the air. The whale leaves the water at an angle of 30° and a speed of 18 mph. Clearly, this monster uses a lot of energy in breaching, yet it is not unknown for the whale to repeat the exercise – the observed record being 130 leaps in 90 minutes! Why does it go to all this trouble? No one really knows. As with all such obscure phenomena, there are those who suggest that the whales are trying to “attract the girls”! Others suggest that the big splash achieved on re-entry rips some of the barnacles off the whale’s surface. There may be truth in either of these suggestions. But Wilson says that he cannot overlook the probability that the whale breaches simply because it gives God pleasure! He is a Magnificent Creator God, and the world He made is not for utility only, but also for beauty!!! |
| 8/3/2023 | In 1981 it was only a theory—one that seemed to go against all logic. The theory said that if you have a signal, say a sound that was too weak to be heard, adding a little noise would make it easier to hear. If you added too much noise, you would drown out the weak signal. Add too little noise and it wouldn’t help at all. But add just the right amount of noise and a sound signal too weak to be heard could be heard. The theory was shown to be a scientific fact in 1983. This illogical effect was given the name “stochastic resonance.” Since the 1980s, scientists have discovered numerous examples of stochastic resonance and have researched various uses for it. Radio static makes it hard to listen to a station, especially if the signal is weak. However, researchers are building unique radios that add just the right amount of static to make impossible-to-receive stations understandable. Now for the surprise! Did you ever wonder how you are able to select a single voice in a noisy, crowded room and hear what it was saying? Scientists now believe that our brains have built-in stochastic resonance processors much more sophisticated than the units they hope to build someday. As one scientist said, “Nature may have understood stochastic resonance long before we did.” What seems illogical—to add noise to a sound to make it clear—is actually an astonishing piece of wisdom. The wisdom in the way this advanced technical knowledge is used is yet one more witness, not to impersonal “nature,” but to our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 8/2/2023 | Many people know that, despite its appearance, coral is actually a tiny animal. Even a small coral growth may be made up of billions of tiny animals, each living inside its limestone skeleton. What many people don’t know is that coral cannot live without the help of algae—a plant. Thousands of one-celled algae live in the tiny stomach of each coral polyp. The polyp requires the waste products of the algae to complete its nutrition requirements and to get the calcium with which it builds reefs. In return, the polyp’s stomach provides an ideal protected living place for the algae. Incidentally, the wonderful colors in living coral come from the algae in each polyp’s stomach. Evolutionists have said that it must take millions of years for the tiny polyps to build large coral reefs, like the 2,000-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, incidentally, is considered the largest structure ever built by living organisms. However, it has now been shown that coral polyps can double their own weight in just over 10 days! As a result, the claim of millions of years for the age of the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by a factor of 40! Many of the long age figures claimed by evolutionists have had to be drastically revised downward as we have learned more about the work of our Magnificent Creator God. The resulting figures fit the Bible’s account of history much more closely. |
| 8/1/2023 | One unusual argument that the universe is the work of the Creator rather than aimless chance goes like this: only with the highest quality research and work, often over many years, can humans begin to approach the excellence of things in nature. One would think, for example, that it would be a simple job for modern science to create a fireproof fabric better than anything found in nature. After all, no living things in nature— besides humans—crash and burn. However, 80% of those who die in airplane crash fires are killed by the blinding, poisonous smoke, much of which comes from their seat cushions. The foam in the cushion begins to produce toxic smoke when the treated upholstery fabric gives out at 1,300° and allows the flames through. It took two years of work before an upholstery manufacturer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, came up with something better. The new fabric, which has since been used on some airline seats, has stood up to a 5,000° blowtorch flame for several minutes without catching fire! Amazingly, the fabric itself is a very dense weave of wool backed with flame resistant yarns. Its inventor says “It’s one of God’s ideas…There are things about wool that are beyond what man can do.” Sheep have no need to produce wool with properties that could help protect them in a place crash—as would have to be the case if evolution were correct. However, since sheep are part of a larger design in our Magnificent Creator God’s provision for humans, He has given their wool qualities needed by humans as well as by sheep. |
| 7/31/2023 | Scientists have, for the first time, successfully communicated with honeybees in their own language! Scientists have for some time known how to interpret many of the elements of the bees’ so-called “waggle dance.” This dance is used by scouts to communicate the location of food sources to the food gatherers in the hive. A couple years ago researchers decided to see if they could confirm their understanding of bee communication. But how do you talk to a bee and get confirmation that she understood what you said? Scientists decided that the only way to do this was to build a robot bee through which they could communicate. The first attempts at building a robot bee acceptable to real bees did not work well. Early models were viciously attacked. Scientists finally perfected a computer-controlled robot bee that real honeybees accepted. These scientists describe honeybee language as elegant and precise. Yet they found they had learned enough bee language to communicate successfully a food source and its location to real bees. They also discovered that they have much more to learn about bee language. As a result, it may someday be possible for farmers to direct bees to crops that need pollination. Just as bees can best understand other bees, we humans can best understand other humans. That explains why, when our Magnificent Creator God wished to communicate with us, He became a human being. That human, Jesus Christ, taught us about God; and He also made peace with God for us, making possible the forgiveness of our sins!!! |
| 7/30/2023 | There are a number of blurry, indistinct, cloudy-looking objects in the night sky which are not pinpoints of light as the stars are. One hundred ten of these are the so-called Messier objects, which were cataloged by one Charles Messier – a French astronomer who lived from 1730 through 1817. These are a mixture of objects. Some of them we would now call nebulae – quite literally, nebulous clouds of interstellar dust and gas. Examples of these are M8 – the Lagoon Nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius, and M42 – the famous Orion Nebula. Others are star clusters, such as The Pleiades, in Taurus – an object mentioned in the Bible, which is cataloged as M45. Still others are actually other galaxies, such as M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, or M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Why did Messier catalog such a wide variety of different objects without commenting on their differentiation? The answer is that he wasn’t actually interested in those objects. He cataloged them, rather, as a police officer catalogs data from a possible suspect in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. Messier was interested in comets – which also, from a distance, look like blurry objects. The difference is that comets, being Solar System objects, move from night to night, whereas his cataloged objects appear fixed relative to the stars. The Hebrew word for star includes what we call stars today and other objects, such as Messier’s objects. All were made by our Magnificent Creator God and declare His glory. All of God’s creation is magnificent in every way!!! |
| 7/29/2023 | What did God have in mind when He created the human male? The world around us offers many images of what it means to be a “real man.” The world offers us the breadwinner, the tough-guy and the workaholic’s unending push for success. Also, it’s becoming increasingly universal that it is the woman who holds the family together. We can be sure that none of these images capture what God had in mind. If we want to learn some practical lessons about what God intended a man to be, we need to begin with God’s original creation of the first man. The first job given to Adam, the first man, was an intellectual task – identifying and naming the animals. Jesus Christ taught us to call God “our Father.” However, we shouldn’t make the mistake of comparing Him to our imperfect human fathers. Human fathers need to learn from God. What kind of father is He? He’s tough. However, toughness does not mean hurling thunderbolts. True toughness is best shown when love persists despite rejection and disobedience. God never tired of patiently seeking Saul of Tarsus, His sworn enemy. However, while He is loving, God is not a wimp. He has established absolutes that we can depend on. He always keeps His Word. We can be thankful for that because when we look at ourselves we know that we have not been the men or women He intended us to be. His Word of grace in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ assures all who cling to Christ that the perfect and almighty Magnificent Creator God is truly our Father!!! |
| 7/28/2023 | Infants will often look ever so serious as they babble away, as if they’re actually saying something of great importance. Most of us have assumed that they do this because they see others talking and they want to join in. The clue to the fact that there is more to speech than simple imitations came when scientists discovered that infants can babble without ever making a sound. Researchers studied five infants, two of whom were deaf and had deaf parents. In the deaf households, communication took place through American Sign Language. Scientists found that both hearing and deaf children babbled in the language used in their homes. Hearing infants produced sounds, then syllables, and eventually meaningful words. The deaf infants did the same with their hands. At first they would make the hand signs for basic letters and numbers, stringing them together without meaning. Just as the hearing infants were beginning to offer meaningful communication by their first birthday, the deaf infants’ signing had reached the same point by their first birthday. Researchers were shocked when they realized what this means. It means that the brain has some type of unified ability built into it for learning language. This conclusion goes against everything evolution says about who and what humans are. However, it fits perfectly with the Bible when it tells us that men and women were made for fellowship and communication with their Magnificent Creator God. |
| 7/27/2023 | For centuries Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that He had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. By the grace of our Magnificent Creator God we are still discovering the many wonders of this world that He spoke into existence in The Beginning. |
| 7/26/2023 | Medical researchers are learning that your thoughts can affect your health. The cells that make white blood cells can be directly controlled by the brain through nerves.Using the language of hormones the brain, as well as individual nerve cells, can direct the abilities of immune cells to kill invaders. Immune cells also communicate back to the brain using hormones. It has been shown that stress and highly emotional states can make this communication less efficient, hampering the immune system. Macrophages are large amoeba-like cells that rebuild injured tissue and devour bacteria, viruses and anything else that should not be in wounded tissue. These amazing little cells can even eat iron filings. But chemicals produced by the body during times of stress, for example during prolonged periods of feeling helpless, actually make macrophages very sluggish. A word of caution. While many New Agers have selectively used some of these findings to promote their pagan ideas about medicine and health, there is nothing mystical going on here. Not only does this link between our brain and our health once again glorify our Magnificent Creator God, it supports biblical truth. In Philippians 4:8 the Apostle Paul advises, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, what-ever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Not only is this advice good for the soul, it is good for the body. |
| 7/25/2023 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator God. |
| 7/24/2023 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. The Creator has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. Our Magnificent Creator God has given us all special gifts to share! |
| 7/23/2023 | While staying with some family members in Kentucky, I was delighted one dark evening to see little flashes of light in the air, low over the garden lawn. Although I was too far away to see the insects concerned, these must have been fireflies. Fireflies are not actually flies – they are beetles. Their light-producing organs are in their abdomens. Most species use these bioluminescent displays for courtship. The bioluminescence is caused by a type of luciferin molecule, commonly called firefly luciferin. The name has nothing to do with evil! It comes from the Latin word for light. Firefly luciferin reacts with oxygen, and the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, luciferase, as well as the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine triphosphate – the energy-giving molecule ATP. Luciferin first forms another highly tensed molecule called a dioxetane, which releases CO2 to form a ketone. The ketone is in a highly excited electronic state, so it “relaxes” back to normal state by releasing energy. This energy is at exactly the right frequency to be in the visible light range. The fireflies in Kentucky emitted yellow light. If one were an evolutionist, one would have to wonder – what would have been the evolutionary advantage for the beetle to produce luciferase if there was no luciferin, or vice versa? We have a lot more work to do to investigate the chemistry of the process, but we still marvel at the wonder of our Magnificent Creator God’s design for these insects and all of the rest of His Creation!!! |
| 7/22/2023 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109°23´ and an acute angle of 70°23´. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Magnificent Creator God. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder God has given them so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness! |
| 7/21/2023 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workman-ship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation. |
| 7/20/2023 | Which of your five senses is most important? Which sense could be lost with the least threat to your life? Most people consider their sense of sight the most important. While the loss of sight is a terrible tragedy, life can go on. Lose your sense of smell and food will be flavorless, but you can get by. Loss of hearing, too, is a great loss, but the loss can be adjusted to. And few people’s lives are threatened by the loss of the sense of taste. However, if you lose your sense of touch, you lose your sense of pain and therefore any warning that you might be injuring yourself. Unfortunately there are people who have no sense of touch. Sometimes they receive life-threatening injuries because they cannot feel pain. Science has shown that touching is necessary for life. Newborn animals that are licked by their mothers have a higher resistance to disease. They are also more likely to live to adulthood than newborns who are untouched by their mothers. Chihuahua pups have a notoriously high rate of death because their mothers are often unwilling to lick them. Lambs will die after birth if their mothers do not lick and nuzzle them. Even human infants who are not lovingly touched enough will suffer from depression, poor sleep, weight loss, poor immunity and, in extreme cases, even death. Our wise Magnificent Creator God has built into us the need for touch. Though we take it for granted, without touch, life would be impossible. |
| 7/19/2023 | If you had painful skin, one of the last things you would apply to it would be hot peppers. Not only do hot peppers burn the mouth, some can even blister the skin. Yet in South America ground hot peppers have been used for centuries to help relieve pain. Scientists have discovered the active ingredient in peppers that relieves skin pain. This sub-stance blocks the pain signals that come from the nerves just under the surface of the skin. The “hot pepper” sauce for skin not only causes no pain, it relieves pain that doesn’t respond to any other treatment. It’s available in creams and ointments that, tests show, relieve pain in two out of three people. Conventional wisdom says that medicines that are found in natural plants were discovered by accident. Someone might accidentally discover a relationship between a person’s having eaten a certain plant and then getting well. They would try the same plants on others with the same disease. If they found that there were more cures, the plant would be remembered as a folk medicine. The “hot pepper” pain reliever for skin tells us that there’s a problem with this theory. People who have a painful skin condition are not likely to apply a pepper sauce. Doing that would be expected to make their skin more painful and cause it to blister. However, it’s possible that our Magnificent Creator God originally gave humans some knowledge of the cures for our ills—cures that He wisely built into creation. |
| 7/18/2023 | Plants make cellulose. Cellulose is a type of natural plastic made of many sugar molecules linked together. Scientists have known for years how to use the natural plastic qualities of cellulose to make things like cellophane and rayon. Scientists have also known that animals generate a similar natural plastic called chitin. Like cellulose, chitin is a carbohydrate made of long chains of sugar molecules. Chitin is found in the shells of all insects and crustaceans, like crabs. Each year the crabmeat industry had thrown away thousands of tons of chitin because scientists couldn’t figure out how to extract chitin from the shells in a usable form. Finally in 1975 scientists discovered how to remove the chitin from shells and change its form so it could be made into whatever forms they needed. Suture thread made from chitin dissolves in the body. This means that stitches don’t have to be removed, and it can be more easily knotted than regular suture thread. Suture thread made from chitin also causes no allergic reaction and it seems to promote healing. It’s hard to believe that a crab shell, which is usually thrown away, could do so much! Food processing companies are even using a chemical made from chitin to recover protein from wastewater. Almost everything in the creation seems to have numerous uses for human needs. This is testimony that our Magnificent Creator God has made this universe for us and that He cares about our needs. In the Bible we learn that He has provided for our greatest need through His Son Jesus Christ. |
| 7/17/2023 | Many cultures around the world have legends about creation and a great Flood that have been handed down from generations in the distant past. Most of these creation and Flood stories sup-port the biblical story of creation and the Flood. The Wallam Olum is the story of creation and the history of the Delaware Indians. It predates the coming of white people or Christianity to North America. The Delaware creation legend reveals an all-powerful creator, who began by creating an earth without dry land, and the heavens including the sun, moon and stars. After dividing the waters from the land, he made all living things, including the first mother. This world was full of joy and had no sorrow until the snake brought wickedness. It concludes by saying that all this happened beyond the great ocean. The Delaware story of the Flood begins with the world filled with evil because of the activity of the evil snake. While the Delaware legend blames the Flood on the snake, a few were saved through the Flood at an island called “Nana,” a name very similar to Noah. While the Wallam Olum is not Genesis, the similarities with Genesis are too many and too exact to be accidental. Similar legends from all over the globe have the same or similar details that they, too, share with Genesis. This can only be explained by the fact that the Bible is accurate in describing how all cultures have shared this common history together. Regardless of what we call Him, it was our Magnificent Creator God to whom we owe it all. |
| 7/16/2023 | Deserts are inhospitable places with little rain—blazingly hot by day and chillingly cold by night. Few plants can survive, but the rock morning glory can. It has large underground tubers resembling sweet potatoes that store water whenever it rains. In times of drought, it’s sustained by the water stored in its twenty or so underground reserves. Jeremiah 17:8 says of those who put their confidence in God: “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”. Our Magnificent Creator God’s provisions are always sufficient! |
| 7/15/2023 | Solar Cycle 10 – a typical 11-year sunspot cycle, from late 1855 to 1867 – was one of the busiest ever observed for solar activity. British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington had noticed a great deal of activity on the surface of the Sun from August 28th, 1859. On the morning of Thursday, September 1st, he once again pointed his brass telescope at the Sun, and he hurriedly made dozens of rapid sketches of the projected images. Suddenly, he reported that he saw “two patches of intensely bright and white light”. He had just witnessed the largest ever recorded solar event – now named the Carrington Event. Within 18 hours, the Earth was experiencing massive Aurora displays – the northern lights seen at latitudes as far south as Cuba. More interesting was the effect on the telegraph systems. All around the world, telegraph systems failed, operators experienced shocks and telegraph papers caught fire. What would happen if a solar storm the size of the Carrington Event happened today? Earth is surrounded by communication satellites, and most countries of the world rely on computer networks and the Internet. All of these could be damaged or destroyed by another Carrington. The Carrington Event at least shows why our Magnificent Creator God created a magnetic field around the Earth. The Aurora displays at least showed that Earth has some protection against such an unusual event. And no event is truly random! |
| 7/14/2023 | For many people bats bring to mind words like “creepy,” “fangs,” “rabies,” and even “ugly.” However, over 450 years ago Martin Luther marveled at the delicate beauty of the bat. He pronounced the creature an excellent witness to the skill and wisdom of the Creator. God must also like bats. Almost one-fourth of all mammals He created are bats! The flying fox bat has a wingspan of nearly six feet. Bumblebee bats, native to Thailand, are the smallest mammals known, weighing less than a penny. There are brilliantly patterned tropical bats called butterfly bats. And hundreds of species of tropical plants depend on bats as pollinators. Popular legend considers bats a serious part of the rabies problem. The truth is that raccoons, skunks, foxes, and even dogs and cats are more likely to have rabies. In fact, one study shows that in Pennsylvania you are more likely to find a rabid cow than a rabid bat. In reality bats are delicate, helpful and intelligent creatures. A typical North American bat will eat about 600 mosquitoes an hour. Large colonies will consume between 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of insects per night! Bats can be trained, demonstrating their intelligence. And finally, an important warning. If you find sleeping bats, don’t disturb them. Even one such disturbance during sleep can be fatal, since stored nutrition may be consumed by the disturbance before the next feeding cycle. So next time you see a bat, don’t recoil in fear. Rather, say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Magnificent Creator God who made both of you. |
| 7/13/2023 | Some people talk to their plants. But what do you say to a bacterium? Evidently the soybean plant knows just what to say to make bacteria its close friend and helper. Symbiosis means a relationship between two different creatures in which they both help each other. Plants need nitrogen for healthy growth. However, while there is more than enough nitrogen in the air, plants normally can’t make use of that nitrogen. Legumes, like soybeans, link up with bacteria that are able to take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form of nitrogen that plants, including the soybean, can use. In return, the plant creates a nice home for the bacteria in nodes in its roots and provides the bacteria with food. The bacteria need a great deal of oxygen and energy to fix nitrogen into the soil. The oxygen is supplied by heme. If that name reminds you of the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in blood, you’re on the right track. That’s why the heme in the nodules turns them reddish. Who makes the heme, the soybean or the bacteria? When alone, neither creature has any heme. Researchers have learned that the plant performs the first part of the chemistry needed to make heme and the bacterium finishes the job. The plant and the bacterium actually communicate chemically with each other so that production goes smoothly! Communication between such different creatures, allowing them to perform sophisticated chemistry to improve both of their lives, shows how inadequate evolution is to explain life. This arrangement surely glorifies our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/12/2023 | Previously we talked about the Perseverance Mars 2020 mission, which included a helicopter named Ingenuity. Another technology demonstration taken with Perseverance is an instrument for collecting oxygen. The atmosphere on Mars is very thin; its surface pressure is only 1% of Earth’s atmosphere. Of this tenuous Martian atmosphere, 95.3% is carbon dioxide, which is only a trace gas on Earth. There is 2.6% nitrogen and 1.9% argon, with trace amounts of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and noble gases. Despite the rarity of oxygen, NASA engineers believe that their equipment can extract oxygen in sufficient quantities to make human exploration of Mars possible. Which brings us to the subject of life. Previous missions – and indeed photographs – have provided evidence that there was once water on Mars. Even Perseverance’s landing site – the Jezero Crater – appears surrounded by dried water channels. But water and atmospheric carbon dioxide do not make life. Says one NASA scientist, “If we found a microbe that arose on the next planet over, if lightning struck twice in this one corner of the solar system, it would suggest that our whole universe could have life on lots and lots of planets and it’s not just us alone in the dark night.” But his “lightning” did not strike once. Chemicals in lifeforms are not produced by mixtures or even simple reactions. They contain codes and information which could only have been put there by the Magnificent Creator God of the Bible!!! |
| 7/11/2023 | Garlic. Even say the word and some people move away to give you some distance. Others gather around, because to them, garlic helps make the meal. Garlic has begun to attract the attention of medical researchers as well. At the Tagore Medical College in India, researcher Arun Bordia kept track of 432 heart attack survivors for three years. During that time half of the survivors drank the juice from six to ten cloves of fresh garlic each day while others took a garlic scented drink with no garlic in it. Over the three-year period the garlic group had 32% fewer heart attacks and 45% fewer deaths than the other group. Research in the United States with chickens, who metabolize cholesterol in much the same way as humans, suggests a reason for these results. Chickens that were fed aged garlic extract showed a 50% reduction in the kind of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Medical researchers are also looking at some interesting evidence that garlic may help prevent some forms of cancer, especially stomach cancer. When our Magnificent Creator God made the heavens and earth, He knew that humans would disobey Him, destroying the creation with sin. He also knew that in doing so we would bring disease and death into the world. We can thank Him that He stocked the earth with substances that could be used to treat some of the earthly effects of sin. However, we can thank Him even more joyfully that He provided the full cure for sin for each of us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ! |
| 7/10/2023 | They are the only cells in the human body that repeatedly die and self-regenerate throughout life. And science considers them so interesting that several branches of science are studying them. I am talking about hair cells. As scientists are learning more about hair, they are coming to greater appreciation of, as one researcher put it, hair’s bewildering biology. A Harvard molecular biologist admitted that one of the reasons we know so little about hair is that scientists have avoided studying this complex structure. The average scalp has about 100,000 hairs growing at any one time. Each hair follicle produces hair for about two to five years, followed by a rest period of four to six months. A miniature assembly line of cells divides within the follicle, pushing older hair cells upward through the skin. Pigmentation is added as each new cell is produced. When the follicle is at rest, it shrivels and many of its cells die. However, seed cells, promising new life to the follicle, hide within it waiting for the signal to spring back to life. As humans grow older the resting time of the follicles increases and growing time decreases, especially in men. So if you find yourself balding, you’re not necessarily losing your hair. It’s just that your hair is spending more time resting than it used to. Our Magnificent Creator God tells us that He cares so much about each one of us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head! |
| 7/9/2023 | David Bowie sang about the Spiders from Mars, but by the time you hear this Creation Moment, the sky above the Red Planet could be buzzing with helicopters; well, one helicopter at least. NASA’s Perseverance mission was launched successfully on July 30th, 2020 and was scheduled to land in the Jezero Crater on February 18th, 2021. We probably know much more about this landing site for a robotic spacecraft than we did about the Mare Tranquilitatis Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon in 1969. The surface of Mars has been extensively mapped by orbiting craft. Many landings have taken so-called rovers with them. Perseverance is another such rover and carries seven different sensing instruments. It will even collect a number of samples for returning to Earth, though the Perseverance mission itself will not return; NASA hopes that a mission in 2026 will be able to retrieve the samples. One very interesting extra feature of Perseverance is that it carries with it the very first aircraft to operate in another planet’s atmosphere. Ingenuity is a sort-of helicopter, or perhaps a drone, designed to be able to fly in the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Seven flights of this robotic drone will provide much new information. Unfortunately, the focus of the mission is, once again, the fruitless search for extraterrestrial life. But we will still follow the mission with interest because God made Mars, and what we find there will cause us to praise our Magnificent Creator God all the more! |
| 7/8/2023 | The headline “Scientist Sees Planets with Very Large Telescope” might not excite the imagination until you realize that the Very Large Telescope, or VLT, is actually a thing! It is a huge reflecting telescope, built by the European Southern Observatory in the desert in Chile. It is actually comprised of four telescopes, each of which has a primary hyperbolic mirror about 27 feet across. The result is that the instrument can “see” objects millions of times fainter than those detected by the human eye. Recently, the VLT was pointed at a star rejoicing in the name TYC 8998-760-1, about 300 light years away. It was already known, from calculations, that the star had two planets orbiting it. So the VLT was able to take a magnificent photograph of the stellar system, clearly showing these planets. Both planets are gas giants. The one closer to the star is 14 times more massive than Jupiter, while the other is six times bigger. The planets are 160 and 320 times further from their star than the Earth is from the Sun, compared with just five and ten times the Earth-Sun distance for Jupiter and Saturn. And all of this fits perfectly into the master plan of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/7/2023 | We don’t often think about our sense of smell. While our noses are on the job all the time, we note an odor only when it is unusual. Most of the time the scents around us contribute, unnoticed, to our overall impression of our surroundings. It’s hard to remain tense at the beach. Simply the mention of the water and waves, the sand and sun, brings back the last trip to the beach and starts relaxing a person. However therapeutic these elements of the beach are, scientists have found that the one beach fixture that is probably most responsible for relaxing us is the smell. The smelly chemical that utility companies put in natural gas so that we can smell leaks is methyl mercaptan. This chemical is also produced by rotting meat. The human nose is extremely sensitive to this smell. We can detect as little as one 400-billionth of a gram of it in a quart of air. Doctors have long known that their noses are helpful in diagnosing disease. A person is brought into the emergency room in a coma. It’s very likely that the doctor will smell the patient’s breath as he tries to discover the problem. A sweet smell could indicate diabetes. The smell of ammonia could indicate a kidney malfunction. Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic. Diphtheria can be identified by a sickeningly sweet odor, and people with the plague smell like apples. A patient who smells like freshly baked bread may have typhoid. While we seldom think about our sense of smell, it’s a wonderful gift from our Magnificent Creator God for which we owe Him thanks. |
| 7/6/2023 | When you are ill, you need sleep. And when you are sick you are usually sleepy. Medical researchers are now learning that it’s not accidental that illness and sleepiness go together. In fact, the relationship is one of God’s ingenious designs. Early in this century scientists isolated what they called the S factor—the S being for sleep. Modern biochemists have identified the S factor as a biochemical that is released from the cell walls of bacteria when our bodies destroy them. This chemical finds its way to the brain where it induces sleep. It also stimulates the immune system. Normally the body breaks down some of the harmless bacteria that live in our digestive systems every day. By the end of the day enough sleep factor has collected in our blood to make bedtime welcome. However, when we are fighting a bacterial infection, our body is destroying many additional bacteria and releasing a lot more sleep factor. That sleep factor is also stimulating our immune system to higher levels of activity. Researchers recommend that we give in to our desire to sleep when we are ill. Our immune system and non-dreaming sleep are closely related. In other words, grandma was right when she told us that we would avoid getting sick if we got enough sleep. It’s no accident that bacterial infections trigger the body to react not only to rid itself of bacteria but also to strengthen itself for the fight. This ingenious design is yet another indication that our Magnificent Creator God does care about what happens to us. That love is why He sent His Son to win our salvation on the cross of Calvary. |
| 7/5/2023 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by their Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/4/2023 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by their Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error. This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty! |
| 7/3/2023 | Though God created the entire living kingdom in only a few days, the variety and creativity of what He made seems nearly unlimited by our standards. One of the more unusual creatures He made was thought extinct until it was rediscovered in 1958. The kakapo parrot lives in New Zealand. The most unusual parrot on earth, it is one of only a few known parrots that prefers to sleep during the day and becomes active at night. Weighing in at five pounds, it is also the world’s heaviest parrot. It is, perhaps not surprisingly, the world’s only non-flying parrot. The Creator’s unusual expression of inventive creativity in designing the kakapo did not end here. The mating habits of the kakapo are especially peculiar for birds. In mating season the males gather in locations that are used year after year for mate selection. Female parrots come to these places to inspect the males to select a mate. However, in most un-bird-like fashion, the males provide absolutely no help building the nest or rearing the young. The kakapo is remarkable because of its many strange traits, most of which would make it least fit for survival. In other words, not only is it an unusual creature, but its more unusual characteristics seem to put it at a disadvantage as far as evolution is concerned. So while evolution would not have made the kakapo, our inventive Magnificent Creator God did, perhaps as a witness against evolution. |
| 7/2/2023 | We have all looked in wonder at the amazing transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. However, did you realize that a moth needs an entirely different kind of brain than a caterpillar? We can truly say that here we have an insect with two brains! In the caterpillar stage, the moth lumbers around in a body that is primarily designed for eating. Its brain must be able to command powerful jaws and a comparatively huge digestive system as well as the complexities of caterpillar locomotion. The world of the caterpillar is very different from the world of the moth. During metamorphosis the caterpillar completely dissolves and the moth is rebuilt from the liquid. The brain, for example, requires new nerve cells and new connections between brain cells, while some brain cells change function, migrate to new locations, or even die. The result is a brain that is 10 times the size of the caterpillar’s and ready to control flight. The moth’s primary purpose in life is to reproduce. So its new brain is able to generate the odors used by moths to identify and communicate with potential mates. It is also equipped to detect the scents of a potential mate. Only our almighty Magnificent Creator God could completely rebuild a caterpillar into a moth. Only He could rebuild and increase its brain ten-fold in only a week or two. Even more amazing is how He remakes people. Through the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ turns us from people who wish to escape Him to new creatures who love Him and find joy in Him. |
| 7/1/2023 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures. |
| 6/30/2023 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm! |
| 6/29/2023 | It is unfortunate that we so often have the sense that nothing technologically important has happened in human history until modern times. This helps maintain the illusion that humans are indeed progressing and evolving upward. Differential gears, allowing a machine to perform two functions simultaneously, were not used in modern times until 1575. However, a model planetarium using differential gears was found in a ship that sank off Greece in 78 BC. While Ben Franklin is given credit for discovering electricity, electric batteries dating from 100 BC have been found in Iraq. The Gate of the Sun is a ten-ton intricately carved stone gate in Bolivia, 13,000 feet above sea level. In Mexico there are boulders with faces carved on them. They were erected between 1250 and 400 BC, carved out of boulders weighing up to 24 tons that were quarried 45 miles away from their present location. How were these giants moved and erected? Joseph Davidovits, a scientist at the Geopolymer Institute in France, believes he may know. He suggests that the builders chemically broke down the stone with acid. Then they carried the liquid stone to the present sites and poured the liquid into molds. In support of his theory, Davidovits points out that some Indians still use this method now, while traces of the acid can still be found in some ancient stone structures. Despite all of our modern gadgets, there is no evidence that humans are any more clever today than they were on the first day they walked the earth when they were placed there by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 6/28/2023 | All insects that hear, except one, have two ears. Some insects have ears on their legs, thorax, or abdomen. However, they all follow the same principle. Their ears are separated so that they can locate the source of the sound – except in one insect. Scientists always thought the preying mantis was deaf. The 1,700 species of mantises have no structure that looks like an ear. Only after a long process of detailed study and testing did scientists finally discover that the mantis can hear. Further investigation finally led to the discovery of one of the most bizarre methods of hearing anywhere in the animal kingdom. The mantis’s hearing organ is difficult to call an ear. Unlike any other insect, the mantis has only one hearing organ, located in a groove underneath its thorax. The teardrop‑shaped groove has a thinner cuticle than other parts of the body. Beneath the cuticle there is a relatively large air sac on each side of the groove. These sacs are connected to the insect’s respiratory system. Near the top of the sac are the nerves that carry the sensation of sound to the nervous system. Scientists say that this hearing organ senses ultrasonic frequencies. When researchers played a bat‑like sound to a mantis in flight, it immediately took an evasive flight path to escape the bat it thought it heard. There is no limit to our Magnificent Creator God’s creativity and His ability to make whatever He can imagine. |
| 6/27/2023 | We want to avoid getting bacteria in our food, don’t we? Bacteria cause illness. Bacteria are bad. Yet, some of the world’s healthiest foods contain deliberately introduced bacteria. One such strain of bacteria is the Lactic Acid Bacterium (LAB). This is used in foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut. Brassicas, such as cabbage, often have low quantities of this bacterium. When sealed in a suitable fermentation jar with salt, the LAB can thrive. LAB is able to withstand high acidity and salinity, so it grows, even in a salty environment. One of the products of LAB’s metabolism is lactic acid. Most other bacteria cannot survive in either acid or salt, so the LAB begins to dominate, while the vast majority of other bacteria die. LAB itself is not harmful to humans, so, paradoxically, the good bacteria have effectively killed off all the bad bacteria, providing a healthy, long-lasting food. When God finished making the world at the end of day six of creation, He looked at all that He had made and declared it to be very good. This must have included bacteria. Since Adam’s sin, many bacteria have mutated (though not evolved, as they have not gained new genetic information) into harmful organisms. Perhaps originally, all bacteria were created to be as useful as LAB in that original perfect world that our Magnificent Creator God gave us and that we so sinfully polluted. |
| 6/26/2023 | It’s commonly known that many animals are able to detect extraordinarily weak odors. The real mystery is how they can smell scents that are 1,000 times too weak to produce the chemical reactions necessary to make a scent signal. From the chemist’s point of view, our sense of smell shouldn’t work as well as it does. When you smelled that wonderful dinner a few days ago, a marvel of chemical reactions was taking place in your nose. Scientists still aren’t sure how we sense such a wide range of smells. It was while investigating this question that scientists may have stumbled across the answer to another question. The receptors in our noses have to detect a certain number of scent molecules before they can trigger the chemical response that makes the signal that tells us we have smelled something. When air is drawn into your nose, an organ called Steno’s duct sprays a fine mist. Scientists always thought this mist simply humidified the incoming air. Now they’ve discovered that the duct also makes proteins that grab onto odor molecules. Sprayed into the incoming air, the proteins collect odor molecules. Then, with their load of odor molecules, they settle onto receptors that trigger your sense of smell. As a result, even scents that are too weak to smell are concentrated by this ingenious system so that we can sense them. Our sense of smell helps protect us, gives our food flavor, and adds richness to the experience of living. It’s truly a marvel of our Magnificent Creator God’s design. |
| 6/25/2023 | “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” One of the most common arguments against a literal six-day creation is that the structure of the days is a literary device, called the Framework Hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests an almost poetic pattern to the days, which they claim demonstrates that the days are not meant to be taken literally. On day one, God made the universe. On day two, He made the seas and atmosphere, and on day three He made the land, with its plants. Then on day four, He filled the universe, day five filled the sea and atmosphere, and day six filled the land. So there are three days of creating ex nihilo and three days of filling those creations. Again, the advocates of this hypothesis maintain that this pattern shows that Genesis 1 is allegorical literature, proclaiming the truth of God as Creator, but does not give a historical account. A quick answer to this point is that if there is a real pattern of two sets of three days, this does not prove that the days are not literal. God is a God of order. However, their neat pattern breaks down. Day one is not actually the parallel to day four – day two is. How so? On day two, God created the firmament, and the firmament refers not merely to the atmosphere but the entirety of space. A better suggestion is to take our Magnificent Creator God at His word, that He created everything exactly how He said He did!!! |
| 6/24/2023 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was the Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language to praise our Magnificent Creator God and Savior and to tell others who He is and what He has done! |
| 6/23/2023 | Tropical beauty has inspired many Hawaiian love songs. However, none is more unusual than the love song of Hawaiian fruit flies. There are more than 100 species of Hawaiian Drosophila, or fruit fly. Just like everything else in that tropical paradise, these fruit flies are not the drab creatures known in mainland biology labs. Hawaiian fruit flies are larger and more brightly colored. And while mainland fruit flies do sing, Hawaiian fruit flies offer more variety in their songs and in the way they make the sounds. One of their unique songs is called the click song. Its high‑pitched clicks sound something like a fingernail being dragged across a comb. Another song is made up of a complex pattern that includes pulses and trills. A third song pattern is a steady purr. A fourth pattern is made up of a low hum. Scientists describe the singing patterns as elaborate for a fly. Scientists suspect that the fruit flies use singing as part of their mating ritual. In one encounter, a male stood behind a female with his head under her wing. He then hummed until she either accepted his advance or flew off. It may be, scientists speculate, that the female feels the male’s song rather than hears it. Songs and rituals seem to vary between the species. Scripture tells us that everything in the creation sings praise to our Magnificent Creator God. Often that truth is taken as figurative. However, as we learn more about His creatures, we see that the complexity of music is a gift that has been given to many things in the creation. |
| 6/22/2023 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! Our Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health. |
| 6/21/2023 | Normally they bother no one. The creatures, called protozoan ciliates, quietly go about their business in water‑filled tree holes, eating other microorganisms. The protozoans themselves are an important food for mosquito larvae. However, as mosquito wigglers begin to populate the water, the protozoans turn into deadly monsters. Secretions from the mosquito larvae alert the protozoans to the presence of the larvae. They begin rapidly growing cells and their appearance changes. The result is a completely different creature that is well‑designed to infect mosquito larvae and kill them. In other words, for self‑protection, the prey becomes parasite, making the would‑be predator its prey. Scientists are seeking better understanding of this in the hope of developing better natural mosquito controls. Scientists have known for some time that some microorganisms respond to predators. The most common protective response is to grow spines or some other projection. This makes the prey difficult to eat. But the strategy used by the protozoan ciliates is the most extreme self‑protective response known. There is no creature in God’s creation that is so unimportant that God has failed to give it ways to make its living. Many creatures have been given what seem to be very uncreative ways to live. However, the fact that even these seemingly unimportant creatures have special gifts from our Magnificent Creator God gives witness to His care for everything He has made. |
| 6/20/2023 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by our Magnificent Creator God allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following the Lord’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own. |
| 6/19/2023 | We have long known that the community within a honeybee hive divides the labor among specialized workers. There are scouts who search for food. Nurses tend the young. Some bees specialized in cleaning. There are even undertaker bees who remove and dispose of dead members of the hive. Scientists have now discovered that honeybee colonies also have brigades of specialized “soldiers.” These bees often seem to be sitting around, not doing much. In fact, they have only one duty—attack large intruders. It appears that these bees are fed and cared for by the hive members while they wait for the alarm. Should a raccoon, bear or human threaten the hive, thousands of soldier bees swarm around the enemy and sting. Soldiers have been well-known members of ant and termite colonies. However, up to now, they have never been confirmed in honeybee hives. The universal need for soldiers for protection among social insects reminds us that some things are universal in this world. These soldiers are not responsible for a bear’s attack on the hive. Nor are human soldiers who follow just war principles responsible for human war. Humanity’s greed and lack of love for others cannot be abolished by getting rid of armies. Rather, greed, theft and the need for protection remind us that we are not what God intended us to be. The solution lies not in denying reality, but in returning to our Magnificent Creator God through the forgiveness of our sins as made possible by Jesus Christ. |
| 6/18/2023 | How many different scents do you think your nose is able to smell? The answer is about 10,000. How does your nose tell the difference between a rose and a skunk? Until only recently, scientists really weren’t sure. Now we know that humans and mammals detect smells by using at least 1,000 different genes. These genes are located in every cell in your body, but they are active only in your nose. This discovery, say scientists, gives them their first insight into how smell works. Before this, said one scientist, “We had almost no knowledge of the olfactory system and this really opens up the molecular study of smell in a very fascinating way.” They say that each of the different genes seems designed to respond to a small group of odors. As each group of genes does its part, the entire system is able to recognize everything we can smell. These genes pass signals from the nerve cells in the nose to a small region of the brain called the olfactory bulb. Now that smell genes are identified, researchers say they can begin to understand how odors are detected and how the brain interprets those signals. Our sense of smell relies on a very elegant and sophisticated system. Imagine, 1,000 genes lie at the heart of that system. Each one of those genes is information—a programmed code that is designed to make sense of what we smell. Information, programming and decoding are all terms that assume that we have a highly intelligent Magnificent Creator God who designed our sense of smell!!! |
| 6/17/2023 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, the Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. |
| 6/16/2023 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Creator. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Put your brain together with the Word of our Magnificent Creator God today! |
| 6/15/2023 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures designed themselves. Only our Magnificent Creator God could have created such a Master Plan for His Master Creation! |
| 6/14/2023 | New research shows that, when attacked, many plants make chemicals that will give munching insects a bad case of indigestion. They also seem to warn their neighbors about the attack so that they, too, start up their defenses. Some plants even call in air defenses. Some plants, when attacked by caterpillars, release a scent that scientists simply describe as “green leaf odors.” These odors attract certain female wasps, who home in on the plant. The wasp will sting the caterpillar, leaving him paralyzed. She then lays her eggs in the pest, who remains paralyzed until the hatching young wasps consume it. That “green leaf odor” is a plant’s way of calling in air defenses. It is communication between plant and insect! Only our Magnificent Creator God can design a plan so complete that every minute piece of His creation is provided for. |
| 6/13/2023 | The study of plants’ abilities to protect themselves from insect attackers is a fairly new and rapidly growing area of research. It seems that new and even more amazing discoveries are appearing every month. Let’s imagine that you are a nice little beetle looking for a tasty tomato plant. Soon after spotting a juicy looking tomato, you are happily munching away. However, before you can finish your meal you are in trouble. Every leaf on the tomato has started turning out chemicals that will, at the least, give you serious indigestion and possibly kill you. At the same time, the plant has warned its neighbors of your presence, and the other tomatoes, too, are turning out the same nasty chemicals. Your very act of eating has made it impossible to get a decent meal in this garden! The latest research suggests that the tomato under attack communicates with its neighbors by releasing a chemical called methyl jasmonate. (This chemical is commonly found in perfumes.) Methyl Jasmonate warns neighboring plants that hungry insects are in the neighborhood. On receiving the news, they begin producing the two chemicals that prevented you from digesting the protein in your lunch. This reaction has been seen among a number of plants, including cotton plants and various trees. Who would ever have imagined that plants warn each other about attack? Who would have guessed that they know enough chemistry and insect biochemistry to mount such a clever defense? While even we who believe in creation are amazed, we know that our Magnificent Creator God can and did equip plants with these abilities. |
| 6/12/2023 | For centuries, Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that our Magnificent Creator God had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. |
| 6/11/2023 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator God! |
| 6/10/2023 | A family of fish that live in the depths of the sea actually go fishing—pole, dangling bait, and all. This is only natural, since they, like people who go fishing, like to eat fish. This group of fish is collectively called the angler fish. The front dorsal spine in the female angler is located on her head. It is much longer than any of the other dorsal fins and has a fleshy bait on the end. When hungry, she sits very still and dangles the bait in front of her mouth. It doesn’t take long before something swims up to investigate this bait as its possible lunch. But before it can think about taking a sample, the angler has turned the tables and eaten her own lunch. Of course this system wouldn’t work very well in the pitch darkness one mile below the surface of the ocean without one other special provision. Like many other fish at such depths, the angler is able to generate her own light. In her case, only the bait lights up, so she stays invisible to her victims. The chemical method she uses to create the light is nearly 100% efficient! In His imaginative creativity, God was pleased to place creatures a mile below the surface of the sea. Yet in His mercy He has provided them with everything they need to make their living there. Likewise, you may not know why God has placed you into a particular situation right now. If He so cares for the creatures a mile below the waves, how much more does He care for You. And He has even included a light for you in His Son Jesus Christ! How wonderful is our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 6/9/2023 | A revolutionary design in metal-cutting blades is changing the metal-working industry. These blades don’t cut like a knife. Instead, the blade is fixed in one position while the metal to be shaped spins on a lathe. This new-style blade stays sharp six times longer than the old blade design. And where titanium used to make the old-style cutting blades dull almost the second they were used, the new blades last up to 30 minutes. This wonderful new blade was developed by two engineers who got the original idea from a rat. You see, rats’ teeth always have a sharp edge. Engineers learned that this is because their teeth are hard on one side and soft on the other. So as they wear, they always keep a sharp edge. Using this principle for metal-cutting has lowered costs and increased productivity, since the blades don’t have to be changed as often. Beginning in Job 39 God humbles Job with several chapters of questions about the wise designs found in the animal kingdom. God’s message is, “Job, if you think you’re so smart, who created all of this with such wisdom?” Even rats’ teeth are created with such wisdom that, once we learned the principle, our technology was greatly improved. Our Magnificent Creator God left nothing out of His creation that would help us live and learn in this magnificent world He made just for us!!! |
| 6/8/2023 | After suffering a stroke, a man in Baltimore suddenly began speaking with a Scandinavian accent. Though he had no experience with languages other than English, he suddenly sounded Nordic and appeared unfamiliar with English! In the weeks after the stroke his speech gradually returned to normal. After three and one-half months, he again spoke with no trace of accent. This affliction is real. It’s called “foreign-accent syndrome.” It’s a rare condition in which a brain malfunction causes speech to sound as if the speaker has a foreign accent. Americans have also reportedly developed apparent German, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Italian accents. Scientists say the fact that speech follows certain patterns in this way suggests something about the way the human brain is wired. A growing number of studies and experiences—such as “foreign-accent syndrome”—suggest that humans have been programmed with much more than just language ability. Some of the unique features of specific languages may actually be programmed into our brains. The Bible tells us that everyone on earth spoke the same language until God confused the languages of rebellious people at Babel. “Foreign-accent syndrome” suggests that many of the detailed characteristics of language may have been originally wired into the brain. It also helps us see that language is more that just noises to which we have given meaning. Language is our Magnificent Creator God’s gift. |
| 6/7/2023 | It’s not very pretty, nor is it graceful, but Colombia’s rock-climbing catfish has a unique ability among fish. Perhaps there are days when a salmon, trying to make it up a waterfall, wishes that it could simply climb the rocks. The rock-climbing catfish’s climbing equipment begins with a powerful sucker mouth. Once it attaches itself to a rock, it can stay stuck despite any torrent. The rock-climbing catfish also has a bony plate on its belly that helps it hold its place while it repositions its sucker a little further up the rocks. The plate has fins with tiny, backward-pointing teeth. These teeth dig into the rock and prevent slipping. The catfish’s third special feature is a set of powerful muscles to control the plate. Once the rock-climbing catfish has attached its sucker to the rock, it pulls up its stomach plate and anchors it. With its body anchored, it moves its sucker up the face of the rock and repeats the process. Following this method, the rock-climbing catfish can walk its way up a 20-foot rock wall against the torrent of a waterfall in about 30 minutes! Who gave the rock-climbing catfish that powerful sucker mouth? Who gave it such a clever bony stomach plate and the powerful muscles to control it? And who taught it to climb rocks? It was the work of our Magnificent Creator God of worlds and stars and you and me! |
| 6/6/2023 | How smart is the smartest tree you ever met? Does it sound silly to speak of trees as being smart? Botanists are learning that some trees have elaborate defenses against insect pests. Studies have shown that a cottonwood tree sets up an elaborate zone defense when attacked by aphids. Some branches will manufacture poisons to resist the aphids while others use a different strategy. Branches that offer the aphids poisons can be dozens of times more resistant to aphids than neighboring branches. Should an aphid land on a leaf that is not manufacturing poisons, that leaf is very likely to be shed by the tree. This squeeze play by the tree keeps both strategies viable in resisting aphids. However, sometimes insects are almost as clever as trees. The eastern tent caterpillar eats a fatal dose of cyanide with each mouthful of cherry tree leaves without harm. The poison is combined with two sugar molecules in the leaves. Normally an insect’s digestive system would separate those sugars, releasing the cyanide. However, the tent caterpillar’s digestive system releases only one sugar, leaving the cyanide bound and harmless. On the other hand the pink sawfly larva concentrates and stores the toxic oils of the eucalyptus leaves it eats. When threatened, the worm-like larva rears up and spits droplets of the poisonous oils at its attackers. There is no level at which the creation fails to show forth intelligence and planning. Every level of creation glorifies our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 6/5/2023 | One good method of avoiding attack in nature is to pretend that you are somebody who should not be attacked. In the insect world one of the most feared creatures is the ant. Not only are ants ferocious, they also taste bad. As a result, many insects mimic ants to avoid predators. One of the most interesting groups of ant mimics is spiders. Of course, even insects can count, so they know that ants have six legs while spiders have eight. To solve this problem, some ant-mimicking spiders wave their front two legs over their heads so they look like antenna. The ants don’t seem to be fooled, however. Nevertheless, they will allow the spiders to hang around so long as they stay out of trouble. Some red ants have red spiders who mimic them and black ants have some black spiders who mimic them. This suggests that many insects can see color. Wasps that prey on one African red spider are no match for the vicious red ant the spider sometimes mimics. The African red ant can easily kill the wasp. This wasp also preys on a black spider. So the black spiders are often found among black ants that are almost as dangerous as the African red ants. Some modern scientists tell us that this appearance of intelligence in insect behavior is nothing more than appearance. However, we should not be as easily fooled as these wasps are by the spiders. There are millions of similar evidences of intelligence in the creation, and they can’t all be deceptive appearance! Only our Magnificent Creator God could have created such intelligence to allow even the smallest of the creatures on this planet to exist together and survive. |
| 6/4/2023 | Evolutionary naturalism paints the picture of life as if it were a haphazard series of accidents that just barely resulted in a range of living things that just manage to survive. This fanciful picture destroys our sense of wonder over the sophisticated engineering designs in nature. Consider the mystery of flight, for example. Some evolutionists suggest that perhaps birds are descended from lizards that fell out of trees a lot. Other evolutionists say that birds came from lizards who grew wings—not for flight, but to chase down and catch insects. Yet, they have little to say about the fact that we humans have come by most of our sophisticated knowledge about flight from studying the birds. Then there is the problem, for the evolutionist, of how flight accidentally evolved so many times for so many creatures. Scientists studying the dragonfly are learning even more secrets of flight. Our best high-performance aircraft can barely lift themselves off the ground. However, the dragonfly can lift 15 times his own weight into the air. Scientists have learned that this is because the dragonfly’s wings are designed to create little whirlwinds over their top surfaces. These whirlwinds are the secret to creating incredible lifting power. Ways are now being planned to apply this secret to new aircraft designs. The engineering excellence found in nature and from which we have learned so much even in this day of interplanetary probes, is not witness to a mindless process of evolution, but to a wise and mindful and Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 6/3/2023 | It seems like science fiction to suggest that if someone typed your name into a computer, misspelling your name, the computer would find it and correct it. Yet the genetic code within each of your cells is an even more sophisticated information storage and transmission system. Not only does your genetic code store far more information in a microscopic space than our largest computers can, it has a built-in error correction system. Scientists have found a number of key enzymes in the cell that have just one job—find and correct errors in the genetic code. Those errors can creep in because of radiation, chemicals, or other reasons. These enzymes faithfully correct any errors, preventing mutations. But these are the very ones scientists thought could cause evolution—before they discovered this process. One scientist who studied these enzymes said science has no explanation for how this process could have evolved naturally. Scientists also say they don’t know how life could have continued without this genetic proofreading and correction. Only our Magnificent Creator God could have been wise enough to design an information system that can correct errors within itself. Even we human beings have not figured out how to do this with our simplest computers. Asking us to believe that blind chance and natural law could have done it certainly strains the credibility of science!!! |
| 6/2/2023 | Genesis uses only a few words and simple language to describe the creation of trees. That hardly seems fair, considering the importance, variety and complexity of the largest and longest-living things on earth. The largest Sequoias in northern California weigh more than six blue whales. The tallest Australian eucalyptus trees and redwoods tower as high as a 30-story building. Some of the Bristlecone pines in the American west are 4,000 years old. Trees do more than provide us with building materials, food and medicine. Like other green plants, trees take the waste carbon dioxide produced by animals and humans and turn it into oxygen. As a bonus, trees produce sugar. The cellulose fiber we call wood is actually only thousands of sugar molecules linked into long chains. In recent years scientists have also learned that trees communicate with each other. They cool the air and pump enough moisture into the air to transform a dry desert-like climate. If it were not for the mycorrhiza fungi, trees would battle through their roots for control of moisture and soil resources. However, when this fungus is present in the root systems, trees will link roots with each other and share water and nutrients. Scripture’s simple statement that God created trees expands into volumes of information as we learn more about them. This is how science done in faith—that is, as our search for knowledge about what God has made—serves to glorify our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 6/1/2023 | It’s a warm day on the Amazon River. A small fish swims near the surface looking among the natural floating river debris for some food. As he looks among the occasional leaf or twig in the water he sees no danger. At the same time, one of the floating “leaves” is waiting for the little fish to move just a bit closer. Then, without warning, the floating “leaf” comes to life, grabs the fish and eats it! What the little fish thought was simply another floating leaf was actually another fish. The Amazonian leaf fish is carefully designed not only to look like a leaf, but to act like one as well. It has a flat body, very much like a leaf. A black line runs the length of its body, giving the appearance of the midrib of a leaf. A fleshy growth in its lower jaw looks like a leaf stem. Beyond looking like a leaf, the leaf fish also acts like a leaf. It lies still in the water, drifting with the current. To hide its identity further, it draws its fins close to its body, removing any last hint that it is indeed a hungry fish looking for lunch. The leaf fish combines deceptive coloring, appearance and behavior into one design so that it, too, can make its living. In this the leaf fish shows that the Creator makes nothing without also designing a special purpose for that creature. According to the Bible, the same can be said even more emphatically for each human being He has made. Our Magnificent Creator God has a special purpose for us, too, and it begins with His plan of salvation for us through His Son Jesus Christ. |
| 5/31/2023 | Are you a musician? From the standpoint of evolution, human musical ability serves no purpose. Assuming that the laws of nature could even invent musical ability, they would have no reason to do so. However, from the standpoint of creation, music serves to praise our Creator. Unfortunately, some of us who enjoy music cannot carry a tune, while other people can play or sing a piece without even looking at any music after hearing it once. The scientific study of musical ability has become an important area of study as a result of some recent discoveries. Researchers have discovered that it’s true that some people have natural musical ability and some don’t. They have found that some people have perfect pitch, even if they have no musical training, while those who are tone-deaf remain tone-deaf despite musical training. Studies show that only about one person in 2,000 has perfect pitch. Researchers were shocked to find solid evidence that musical ability is genetically inherited. Studying musical ability in both musically trained and untrained families, they found that musical ability follows a dominant inheritance pattern. Sons or daughters have a 50% chance of inheriting the gene from a parent who carries it. How could mindless evolution develop a gene that codes for musical ability? Even evolutionists appear to be puzzled by this. But those of us who believe in the Magnificent Creator God praise Him whether we have musical ability or not! |
| 5/30/2023 | Late at night, in hundreds of thousands of homes around the country, people are watching a bewildering array of monster movies. In these films, shadowy and not-so-shadowy monsters attack, possess or inhabit their victims. These stories are make-believe. However, in our real world, there is a fungus that does all these things. These fungi grow in and on the bodies of insects. They begin their work when a single fungus spore lands on the body of an insect. The spore germinates by growing thread-like filaments through a weak spot or some other entry point in the insect’s outer shell. Once inside the insect, these thread-like filaments grow into the insect’s nervous system. Scientists have been amazed by the apparent fact that the fungus then seems to take over the insect, actually controlling its movements. It seems that the fungus directs its victim to climb a convenient plant to a height that will make the next generation of spores likely to land on another unsuspecting insect. It is there that the insect dies and the fungus produces its spores. To the evolutionist, the ability of such a so-called “low” form of life to possess and control a more evolved form of life is totally without explanation. To those of us who believe in creation, intelligence is not a matter of evolution. Intelligence is the gift of our Magnificent Creator God. Only He has all intelligence and wisdom. There are no limits to His creativity as He provides His creatures with ways to proclaim Himself as their Creator!!! |
| 5/29/2023 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen, the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. The Creator has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. |
| 5/28/2023 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workmanship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation. |
| 5/27/2023 | Roman Vishniac is a renowned photographer of microscopic scenes. One of his favorite subjects is one of the so-called simplest forms of life. This “simple” life, the protozoan, is supposedly the ancestor of all living things. However, Vishniac has noted that the protozoan is neither simple nor archaic in character. This creature carries out all the functions of life that we require millions of cells to sustain—all within a single cell. There is a parallel in technology. The first adding machines were large and heavy contraptions. As these mechanical adding machines became smaller, they had to be more cleverly designed because they were smaller. The first electronic calculators were even smaller and lighter than their mechanical brothers. But they were still much larger and simpler than calculators today. As calculators have decreased in size, they have had to be more cleverly designed because they are smaller. Vishniac has learned that the so-called “simple” one-celled creatures are not simple at all. This is because they must carry out the business of life within the limits of their small size. This has not swayed him from evolution. However, this fact has convinced him that current theories are wrong. You see, evolution is in trouble if there are no “simple” forms of life. We believe that this clear evidence that there are no simple forms of life—evidence powerful enough to sway the experts—supports the Bible’s claim that all forms of life were created in finished form by a wise Magnificent Creator God. |
| 5/26/2023 | You’re not feeling well and you have a fever. Is your increased body temperature good for you or should you try to lower it? Medical researchers are learning what happens in the body when we develop a fever. They say that the body’s fever response is usually a very important part of our body’s defense against disease. Normally the body’s temperature varies through the day. If the body’s temperature drops below 80° or climbs higher than 108° for a prolonged period, death usually results. Your body has a thermostat, called the hypothalamus, to keep its temperature within that range. When disease germs are detected in your bloodstream, your white blood cells release a chemical called EP. EP quickly makes its way to the hypothalamus, where it raises the setting of your thermostat. This increase in temperature can make your body increase its production of T cells by 20 times or more to fight bacterial infection. It also increases the production of blood chemicals that fight viruses. EP also blocks bacteria’s ability to make use of the free iron in your blood at just the time bacteria are most in need of that iron. Even iguanas and fish are known to raise their body temperature when ill by moving into warmer environments. Does the fever response just accidentally happen to help fight infection, or was it designed to work the way it does? Clearly we must thank our Magnificent Creator God for this cleverly designed defense against disease! |
| 5/25/2023 | We live in a world—indeed a universe—that is in continual change. Things have been designed that way for a very important reason. Unfortunately, some people choose to define evolution as simply change. However, that’s not the kind of continuous change that surrounds us. The change we see around us serves to keep things the same. Biologists call this stasis. That might sound contradictory, but think about it for a moment. A baby is born—that’s change. The baby grows into a child and then a young adult. That’s more change. In the end, though, a new generation is born to replace the last generation, and things are as they were. It’s the cycle of life, common to all living things. What’s more, the interrelated life cycles of all living things complement each other. Plants use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make oxygen and food, which are needed by the animal kingdom and human beings. Each generation of living things reproduces after its own kind, helping to keep this balance in tune. The change we see all around us was designed by our Magnificent Creator God to renew the creation so that it might remain stable—the same. We can truly say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, this state of affairs will not go on forever. One day—and perhaps soon—the world will end. The Son of God who was the instrument of our creation and the instrument of our salvation will return. Are you ready to meet Him? |
| 5/24/2023 | Is it possible that your pharmacist could be a chimpanzee? That’s not such a silly question. Naturalists are discovering that many animals use a variety of plants and other items to treat their illnesses. Animals often know about the medicinal properties of plants when modern medicine has yet to learn about them. Recently naturalists noticed that one of the monkeys in the African preserve under their care had become lethargic, lost her appetite, and obviously had a severe gastric upset. A few hours after she became sick, she started munching on a native shrub that is not a normal part of the monkey’s diet. She chewed the plant, swallowed the bitter juice and spit out the pulp. By the next afternoon her symptoms were gone and she was feeling better. After a little research, scientists discovered that local tribes use juices from the same plant to treat intestinal upset and loss of appetite. Studies of the juices of a root that bears rub into their coats show that the bears are using an effective insecticide. Scientists have observed elephants, monkeys, birds and bears eating a variety of things that were not a normal part of their diet only to discover that the things being eaten had medicinal properties. Most amazing is that the animals know how best to take their medicine. If a leaf is best swallowed whole to kill intestinal parasites, it will be swallowed unchewed! Who other than our Magnificent Creator God and Great Physician Himself could have taught the animals this medicine? |
| 5/23/2023 | Have you ever watched ducks out on an icy lake paddling around in the near-freezing water. They will spend much of the day in that one spot with the temperature well below freezing, and yet the cold doesn’t seem to bother them. Perhaps on shore there are some sparrows hopping around in the snow. One wonders: why don’t birds need shoes and socks? If you or I ran around with bare feet and legs when the temperature was below freezing, it would not be very long before we had a good case of frostbite. We could even lose so much body heat that our very lives would be threatened. Birds have a network of arteries that all blood going into their legs must enter. These arteries are interwoven with the veins returning from the foot. When the blood going to the foot enters this structure, called a “wonder net,” its temperature is 106° F. The blood returning from the foot at the same time is only 37°F. The warm blood passing through the net reheats the cold blood coming from the foot before it enters the body. The result is that the bird loses very little body heat. So the blood going into the foot never becomes dangerously cold in normal winter weather. The wisdom of this design is obvious. Could birds have survived having their feet frozen off before they learned to evolve this special arrangement? Our only conclusion can be that there is a Magnificent Creator God who cares for all of His creation, including you and me!!! |
| 5/22/2023 | We are beginning to discover more about how Neanderthal people were not primitive subhuman cavemen, as popular-style evolutionary documentaries show. Instead, they were actually fully human – and the evidence for this is so conclusive that even serious evolutionists accept the fact today. It appears that Neanderthals cooked. They didn’t just eat raw or burnt meat. It appears that food remains were seasoned with herbs. They also used nuts and legumes, among other plant-based edibles. Perhaps they were familiar with the Keto Diet! Those interested in natural remedies often recommend using certain tree barks as an infusion or just chewed, as a painkiller. This is because such barks – I use willow bark – are a source of salicylic acid, which is closely related to aspirin. It has even been found that Neanderthals consumed the mold penicillium, which we now know produces the well-known antibiotic penicillin. Their clothing included furs, required to combat European conditions during the post-Flood Ice Age. But they also seemed to wear pendants and other jewelry. An excellent, recent article in Creation magazine by Robert Carter and Lita Cosner, gives links to scientific papers on these and other civilizing traits attributed to Neanderthals. Though the authors are not Bible-believing Christians, their article reminds us that Neanderthals, being human, were descended from Adam through Noah, just as we are. All things were made by our Magnificent Creator God for a specific reason and for a specific purpose. |
| 5/21/2023 | When we compare ourselves with many of the other living things on this Earth, our abilities are not very impressive. A camel can carry 1,000 pounds 30 miles through the desert every day. As a human being, I become tired even thinking about walking 30 miles with empty pockets. The ostrich can run at 30 miles per hour, faster than my car might go during rush hour. The Indian swift can fly at more than 100 miles per hour. The elephant’s trunk has 40,000 muscles. This is 70 times the number of muscles in your entire body. Yet, his trunk can bulldoze a tree or pick up a pin. Many of us can’t do either one on the first try. The flea can jump 350 times its own length, a total of 13 inches. This is equivalent to our jumping 2,000 feet into the air. Most of us can’t jump more than two feet off the ground. As it works out, 13 inches is just about right if you are looking for a nice warm dog on which to raise a family. A tiny insect called the midge beats its wings an amazing 133,000 times per minute. That’s a hundred times faster than you can blink your eye. Humans can use their superior intellect to build the machines they need. With those machines, they can outdo any one of these creatures. But God simply made a gift to the animals of the specialized abilities they needed. God expects us to follow His example and design and build what we need. If we look carefully, we will see that our Magnificent Creator God has given us all the materials and all the ideas we need within the creation. No one can say that He does not care what we do with our lives on Earth!!! |
| 5/20/2023 | Have you ever thought what a strange material water actually is? A water molecule comprises of three atoms – two hydrogens and one oxygen. Oxygen is an element in Group VI of the Periodic Table; Group VI also contains the elements sulfur, selenium, and tellurium, in increasing order of size (oxygen is the smallest. Hydrogen can also form compounds with these elements: H2S, H2Se, H2Te. These have the boiling points -60.7, -41.5, and -2.2deg Celcius. Therefore, all these compounds are gases at room temperature. If we were following the size of the Group VI atom only, then water should have a boiling point considerably lower than that of H2S. But it doesn’t. In fact, the boiling point of water is higher than all those other compounds, at 100 deg C (or 212 deg F). This, of course, is not the only anomalous property of water. The solid form of water – ice – floats on liquid water. So what, you might say. Well, the solid form of every other liquid there is always sinks in its liquid. If you have ever allowed molten candle wax to cool down, for example, you will notice it freezes from the bottom up. Nearly all liquids behave that way – except water! In short, the most common liquid in the world – the one that we require most for life – behaves like no other liquid. It is almost as if it were specially designed! It was our Magnificent Creator God who designed the Earth – including water – for us to inhabit. |
| 5/19/2023 | The relatively rare bucket orchid, Coryanthes, behaves almost like an animal at pollination time. This remarkable ability is essential to its survival. Coryanthes has a steep-sided flower. Two glands extend over the center of the “bucket” and secrete a clear fluid into the flower after it opens. Just above the pool of fluid inside the bucket, a tunnel opens to the outside of the bucket. At the end of the tunnel are the flower’s pollen and stigma. When it opens, the flower sends out a strong sweet odor that can attract male bees from over five miles away. The male bees collect a waxy material on the flower’s surface that they later use in mating rituals. As the number of bees collecting this substance off the flower’s surface increases, so does the likelihood that in the excitement one of them will fall into the pool below. When this happens, the sticky fluid makes it impossible for the bee to make it out of the “top” of the bucket-shaped flower. However, the tunnel provides an easy exit. But as the bee nears the tunnel’s end, the flower drops down a projection from the tunnel’s ceiling, holding the bee for about ten minutes before freeing him. While the bee is held, the flower glues two packets of pollen to the bee. If it should happen that the bee already has pollen packets, this activity delivers the pollen to the stigma, and pollination is complete. The Coryanthes orchid not only shows us the Magnificent Creator God, but it shows us how unlimited His creativity and imagination are. |
| 5/18/2023 | How does your nose work? Medical researchers admit that they don’t know. Your nose performs an extremely unlikely job. It senses invisible molecules in the air and turns each molecule into a unique sensation that is sent to the brain. If the fact that molecules floating in the air could be detected was a modern discovery, it would be hailed as the scientific discovery of the century! Medical researchers do know that the roof of your nose cavity contains about 10 million cells that are wired directly into the brain. The nervous system that connects your olfactory cells to your brain is so large and complex that its surface area is several times greater than the surface area of your body. Researchers also know that your sense of smell is important to your sense of taste. For example, that’s why, when you have a head cold, chocolate tastes like a flavorless waxy paste. In this case what you taste in your mouth has more to do with what is happening in your nose than on your tongue. Many creatures, including birds, can sense odors. Farmers who had difficulty with birds eating as much as 20% of the food set out in feed lots discovered that birds hate the smell of grapes. When they laced the feed with grape scent, the birds left it alone, but the cattle didn’t seem to mind. Researchers have also learned that each of us has a unique “odor print.” This reminds us that each of us is a unique being, made by our Magnificent Creator God because He wanted to have a relationship with us. |
| 5/17/2023 | You have 30,000,000,000,000 individual cells in your body. That’s thirty trillion, and you have about two hundred different types of cells, including red blood cells, skin cells, nerve cells (neurons), and fat cells. Each type of cell performs a vital role in keeping your body healthy. As amazing as it seems, the average human body makes between two and three million new red blood cells every second. Oh, how we want each of our thirty trillion cells to be devoted to Jesus. We’re to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. As amazing as our incredibly-designed bodies are, we also have minds, personalities, and spirits. And we have gifts, talents, abilities, and strengths. The Lord gave you the wonderful workmanship of YOU so you could serve Him. Today, present your body to Him as a living sacrifice and let your life be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which happens as you meditate on His Word. Let Him be Lord of all there is of you. We are more than the chemicals that form our body. We are a special creation of God. Man is our Magnificent Creator God’s masterpiece—His workmanship, the crown of creation. |
| 5/16/2023 | Blessings can become curses. For example, a painkiller may be used to cover up an injury that needs immediate treatment. Pain is unpleasant. However, when pain tells us to move our hand from the hot stovetop, it helps us prevent worse injury. When God created the universe and placed humans on this earth, there was no disease, no pain, and no death. The Bible tells us that God also knew that our freedom to withdraw our love from Him would also result in the consequences of withdrawing that love—that is, disease, pain and death. In His wisdom, God filled the creation with chemical factories that could provide temporary help for pain and disease. Foxglove, or digitalis, offers a treatment for heart failure. Quinine, from a South American tree, is used to treat malaria. Steroids come from a Mexican yam. A treatment for gout is made from the autumn crocus. A fungus that grows on the rye plant and caffeine from coffee beans are used to treat migraine headaches. White willow bark, which contains a form of aspirin, has been used for thousands of years as a natural treatment for pain and fever. Pain, disease and death call our attention to our much more serious spiritual condition. If we did not have to face death in this life, we would be condemned to spend eternity in an imperfect world. We can thank our Magnificent Creator God that He has provided the remedy for our sin in the forgiveness of sins through His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 5/15/2023 | We all have a number of clocks within us that help keep life constant in changing surroundings. The pineal gland is one clock that helps us adjust to our surroundings like the changing lengths of daylight through the year. Earlier in this century many scientists, having no understanding of the pineal, decided that it had no purpose and was left over as a vestige from our evolution. Creationists knew it must have a purpose because they knew we have not evolved. If you are one of those people who typically feel a bit more lethargic or even depressed during the darkest months of winter, you might be able to blame your pineal, which is located near the center of your brain. How can a gland deep in the center of the brain know how long the days are? Light causes our bodies to make certain chemicals. When days are short, those chemicals are scarce, so the pineal cannot make from these chemicals the hormones that encourage the alertness we feel in the spring and summer. In addition, your pineal has a private nerve hookup to your eyes, so it can literally see for itself how much light is available! Scientists have found that adding artificial light during winter can sometimes help the winter blues. Our bodies are a network of complex control systems and chemical factories—a complex union of systems that go beyond the abilities of the best human designers, but which testify to the wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 5/14/2023 | In the tiny museum of Isma’ilya, northeast of Cairo, is an artifact that corroborates the Biblical Exodus.. It’s known as the “El Arish Stone”. It is a piece of black granite weighing two tons, measuring 4 feet in length, and 2.5 feet in width. It was found in 1887 on a farm at El Arish, lying on its side. At the time, it was being used as a water trough for cattle. When archaeologist Frances Llewellyn Griffith found the slab of granite, his clue to its value was the hieroglyphics. By the writing, he dated the object to the Ptolemaic period, specifically the 30th Dynasty (380-360 BC), when it was probably used as a shrine. The inscriptions seem to refer to events some 1200 years earlier (c. 1500 BC) and appear to tell the story of the Exodus, but with a twist: this story is told from Pharaoh’s point of view. The black granite inscription corroborates the story of the parting of the sea, as told in Exodus 14. There is a unique hieroglyph on it: three waves and two knives. Egyptologist James Hoffmeier has suggested that we look at the hieroglyphic literally. Seen in this way, the obvious translation is the “parting of the sea” or the “parted sea”. Because the El Arish stone was being used for water for cattle, some of the inscriptions have been eroded, leaving the ones on the right and back sides of the monument mostly intact. In all, 74 lines are still legible. One line seems to be referencing Moses: he is referred to as the “Prince of the Desert” and his Israelite followers are called the “evil ones” or “evil-doers”. The Egyptian text also tells about how Pharaoh chased the Queen Mother, Tefnut, presumably the royal princess that once raised Moses, as she was leaving with the departing Israelites. This corroborates the Talmud (Sotah 12a) which states that the princess left on the Exodus, marrying the Israelite leader, Caleb son of Yefuneh. The stone also seems to be reporting some of the Biblical plagues, including prolonged darkness and a terrible tempest. Furthermore, it mentions a specific location next to where the sea parted. The place is called “Pekharti”. Remarkably, this exact place is mentioned in Exodus 14:2,9 as the location where the Israelites camped just prior to the parting of the sea. In the Book of Exodus, it is called “Pi-hahiroth”. If all this is not enough the Torah states that, as he was dying, the Biblical patriarch Jacob/Israel blessed his son Joseph wishing for Joseph’s children to “fishify” i.e., that they ”increase in the land like fish”. For this blessing, he made up a new word; “fishify”, “Idgu” in Hebrew (Genesis 48:16). Later, when the Israelites are leaving on the Exodus they take the bones of Joseph with them to the Promised Land (Exodus 13:19). Shockingly, the El Arish stone says that when the “evildoers” left Egypt, they took “Dagai” with them. The exact nickname given by the Torah to Joseph! Isn’t is curious how academics can ignore inconvenient archaeology that proves the Bible as inspired by our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 5/13/2023 | Both archaeology and the Bible suggest that the world was once quite different from the world we know today. Each agrees that the earth’s climate was once much more uniform than it is today. At one time the tropics may have extended into what are today polar regions. However, the Bible and evolutionary geology don’t agree on how long ago that was. Bible-believing geologists, on the other hand, are reporting evidence to support the Bible’s story of history. In the last few years scientists have been surprised to discover dinosaur fossils in Alaska. Dinosaurs need warm temperatures—warmer than Alaska was thought to have been. In 1986, on Canada’s Axel Heiberg Island, only 600 miles from the North Pole, scientists found a huge, dense forest. Some of the trees were well over 125 feet tall. They have been snapped off at the stump and are neither fossilized nor petrified, but remain as fresh wood. Even some of the leaves are still intact. The area was filled with spruce, hickory, dawn redwood and cypress trees and was evidently a swamp, since tropical turtle and alligator remains have also been found. Tree rings show that the area was warmer in the recent past, while the size of the rings tell us that there were short, hot summers during which rapid growth occurred, followed by long, dark winters as there are today. The most interesting conclusion reached by the scientific team is that the entire region must have been subjected to a huge flood! This discovery tells us that all of geology must be restructured to present a history that agrees with the Bible’s story of the earth’s past as told by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/12/2023 | The swiftly moving bat cuts almost invisibly through the darkness, silent to all but those who can hear its ultrasonic radar. What chance does a poor night-flying cricket—prized as a tasty bat snack—have? Let’s treat this problem as if you were the Creator, faced with the problem of giving your night-flying cricket a chance against its predator. Of course, you could design the cricket so that it would stay in its hiding place at night, but then you wouldn’t have a night-flying cricket. You could give the cricket the ability to hear the bat’s radar, but that alone won’t help the cricket if he can’t get to safety. The solution our true Creator has invented to help the cricket preserve its life is another example of His engineering excellence. He has built the cricket with a single-celled bat detector that is wired into the cricket’s nervous system. The detector is triggered by the frequency that bats use for navigation. When triggered, the cell fires off up to 500 impulses per second. These impulses automatically cause the cricket to steer away from the source of the ultrasound. The most impressive engineering fact about this bat detector is that it only works if the cricket is in flight and therefore vulnerable to bats. When crickets are safe from bats—resting, hiding, eating or preening—the bat detector cell doesn’t fire any warning at all! The precise elegance that our Magnificent Creator God has designed into the cricket for its protection is a witness to His wisdom in caring for all He that has created. |
| 5/11/2023 | God determined the exact number of stars that He spoke into existence. He identified each star with a name (Psalm 147:4), an intimate act that demonstrates His attention to the smallest details. His strength—insight, discernment, and knowledge—have “no limit” in the past, present, or future (v. 5). God hears each desperate cry and sees each silent tear as clearly as He notices each sigh of contentment and belly laugh. He sees when we’re stumbling and when we’re standing in triumph. He understands our deepest fears, our innermost thoughts, and our wildest dreams. He knows where we’ve been and where we’re going. As our Magnificent Creator God helps us see, hear, and love our neighbors, we can trust Him to see, understand, and care for us. |
| 5/10/2023 | What keeps the big-bodied bumblebee with those little stubby wings in the air? Scientists are still trying to learn the secret of bumblebee flight. And while they are learning some astonishing things about the bumblebee, they still don’t know how he does it. Scientists have been testing bumblebees by monitoring their energy use, placing them in wind tunnels, and measuring their oxygen use. No, they haven’t been able to make little oxygen masks for the bees—bumblebees have 24 breathing holes. Scientists have learned that a flying bumblebee flaps its wings 160 times per second and consumes the equivalent of 180 candy bars per hour! A flying bee uses the same amount of oxygen for its body weight as a flying bird or a bat. However, unlike birds, the bumblebee uses no more oxygen when hovering than when flying. This is only one of the discoveries that contradict scientists’ theories. In fact, the director of the latest studies on bumblebee flight admits that they still have no idea how the bumblebee stays in the air. He warns other scientists to stop using the current theories on the subject because they are far too simple. Of course, our Magnificent Creator God knows how to make a bumblebee fly, even if the best of modern science can’t figure it out. This should help us to see that when scientists tell us they have figured out how everything could have been made without a Creator, they don’t know what they’re talking about. |
| 5/9/2023 | The silk produced by spiders is very different from the silk produced by silkworms in some very important ways. While silkworm silk is strong yet not prone to stretching, spiders make silk that is both strong and stretchy. They also make several different kinds of silk, each with its own purpose. In fact, spider silk is stronger than an equal amount of steel and yet it stretches. Spider silk is made of nothing more than proteins. However, scientists are finding it extremely difficult to study the chemical structure of spider silk because it resists most of their efforts to break it down into its chemical parts. Scientists have finally resorted to hot, concentrated acids to break down the silk. They are learning that one type of spider silk is made up of lengths of very stiff amino acids, separated by segments of amino acids that form a springy helix. Together they contribute to the strength and stretchiness of spider silk. Scientists are exploring how spider silk is made, because this wonderful material promises new methods for creating stronger and lighter materials for human use. One possible use would be making cloth that is both comfortable and bulletproof. Our Magnificent Creator God has done all things well. The fact that we can learn to design better things by learning how He designed things is a witness for His wisdom as well as a witness against claims that the creation designed itself by trial and error. However, there is much more to God’s plans for us, as you can learn from the Bible. |
| 5/8/2023 | It comes as quite a surprise to discover that the word locust does not actually indicate any separate species. Locusts are really just grasshoppers, but the term refers to their well-known swarming behavior. Under normal conditions, locusts are solitary insects. In normal times, they cause little or no problem to agriculture. But sometimes, conditions are not normal. After times of drought, the locusts seem to produce far more nymphs than would be normal. These then begin to swarm as the insects suddenly become gregarious. These swarms of locusts cause terrible problems for agriculture. In swarming conditions, the insects turn to eating crops and can devastate whole fields in short order. The transformation seems to be caused by increased body concentrations of serotonin, and this, in turn, is produced when there are multiple touches of the hind legs by other locusts, caused by overcrowding. Towards the end of 2019 and into 2020, large swarms of locusts affected parts of Africa and Asia, and these were so large that they brought to mind the plague of locusts in Egypt, mentioned in Exodus. For these reasons, locusts were, in the Bible, a symbol of destruction. In Joel 2:25, we read: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25). The destruction caused is to be reversed by the blessing and favor of our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 5/7/2023 | If you had painful skin, one of the last things you would apply to it would be hot peppers. Not only do hot peppers burn the mouth, some can even blister the skin. Yet in South America, ground hot peppers have been used for centuries to help relieve pain. Scientists have discovered the active ingredient in peppers that relieves skin pain. This substance blocks the pain signals that come from the nerves just under the surface of the skin. The “hot pepper” sauce for skin not only causes no pain, it relieves pain that doesn’t respond to any other treatment. It’s available in creams and ointments that, tests show, relieve pain in two out of three people. Conventional wisdom says that medicines that are found in natural plants were discovered by accident. Someone might accidentally discover a relationship between a person’s having eaten a certain plant and then getting well. They would try the same plants on others with the same disease. If they found that there were more cures, the plant would be remembered as a folk medicine. The “hot pepper” pain reliever for skin tells us that there’s a problem with this theory. People who have a painful skin condition are not likely to apply a pepper sauce. Doing that would be expected to make their skin more painful and cause it to blister. However, it’s possible that our Magnificent Creator God originally gave humans some knowledge of the cures for our ills – cures that He wisely built into creation. |
| 5/6/2023 | Scientists are learning that even the lowly bacteria have mind and memory. New research is showing that mind, memory, brain, and personality did not evolve. These can be found in the lowliest of creatures, including the bacteria. Another sign of intelligence in a life form is the ability to learn. Using attracting and repelling substances, scientists have found that bacteria can learn about their surroundings and draw conclusions. Follow-up tests showed that they later remember what they learned. Scientists have even found that younger bacteria learn better than older ones. If some things are not learned when young, they never can be learned! It seems that it’s hard to teach an old bacterium new tricks! The biggest surprise of all came when scientists discovered that bacteria have what the researchers called individual personality. They are mystified about how bacteria, each with the same genetic structure and from the same environment, can develop unique quirks in behavior. Because we find individual personality even in the lowly bacteria, we know that did not evolve. That God would give even a bacterium the gift of personality shows us something about His mind toward us. Nothing is so small or unimportant that it escapes His attention. Since He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from the decay that is in the world because of sin, there is no force too great for Him to overcome. Surely He is a Magnificent Creator God of details as well as a God of love, Who is concerned about every individual among us!!! |
| 5/5/2023 | Most of us were amazed when we first learned that physicians in ancient Egypt did brain surgery. Even more amazing is that the skulls of their patients showed healing: they accomplished such complicated surgery without killing their patients. That physicians had the knowledge to do such delicate operations thousands of years ago challenges the modern, evolutionary view that humans began as primitives. Where did such knowledge come from? How did man learn that relieving fluid pressure on an injured brain prevented further damage and promoted healing? Obviously, according to the modern view, the first would‑be physician to try brain surgery had no idea what he was doing. However, history paints a very different picture. Recently, archaeologists in west central China discovered a skull of someone who had brain surgery over 4,000 years ago. A large hole in the center of a series of cracks had been made by scraping through the bone. The skull shows that healing took place after the surgery, indicating some degree of success. Even older examples of successful brain surgery have also been found in eastern Europe. Creationist dating would place these examples to within several centuries after the Flood. That the knowledge and skill to do successful brain surgery was so widespread so long ago suggests that man had such knowledge and skill even before the Flood. Noah may even have passed on knowledge that had been passed down to him from Adam himself! Our Magnificent Creator God is not called The Great Physician without merit!!! |
| 5/4/2023 | “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.” Psalm 50:10-12 “If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?” Many of us are used to such accusations from atheists, but, unfortunately, many Christians do not know how to answer the point. Christians would be right to point to Genesis 3 and show that evil came into the world by disobedience – the disobedience of Adam – which polluted the entire world. However, there are some who object to this presentation of the Eden account on the grounds that, if God is a God of love and righteousness, how could He allow evil to happen in this way? This question leads some, incorrectly, to assume that God cannot know for sure what is going to happen in the future. The problem, if such it is, is better resolved by reasoning in biblical categories. Thinking in categories appears to be a lost art. Our error is in judging God by human standards even though God rebukes us, in Psalm 50, declaring: “You thought that I was just like you.” God is not like us, even though we are made in His image. We understand events through the passage of time, but God is transcendent over time. Therefore, to us it appears that God, in His Sovereignty, wills two different things; He permits evil but is not responsible for it – we are. If we do not fully understand this, we remind ourselves that His thoughts are so much higher than ours. The wonders of our Magnificent Creator God exceeds anything we can comprehend with our human minds which is why we have faith in an omniscient and omnipotent Father!!! |
| 5/3/2023 | According to the Bible, Noah’s Ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. It was built of a type of wood called “gopher wood.” This may have been laminated wood, but it was wood. However, skeptics claim that even today wooden boats cannot be made that large simply because wood is not strong enough to endure the huge stresses generated by such a large structure; they say only iron can endure these stresses. That is, of course, not true. Ancient writers tell us of a sea battle in 280 B.C. in which the Leontifera participated. They describe the Leontifera in some detail. They tell us that she carried 1,600 rowers and 1,200 additional fighting men. From these and other details, the Leontifera has been estimated to have been between 400 and 500 feet long. Plutarch tells us of another ship built around 294 B.C. that had twice as many banks of oars as the Leontifera. In the late third century B.C., Ptolemy Philopator built a ship that took 400 sailors to run, in addition to 4,000 rowers. With additional soldiers on board, the ship carried 7,250 men. This battleship was 420 feet long, wider than Noah’s Ark and about the same height. Again, recorded history proves that The Bible is trustworthy in all that it teaches, even when it talks about historical fact or the natural world that science studies. The world and all that it contains were created by our Magnificent Creator God and the facts cannot be denied. |
| 5/2/2023 | We do not want dandelions in our gardens. They are classed as weeds, and they have a tendency to take over large areas, especially in flower beds and also among the grass in a lawn. But when we come across them in the countryside, they are much more welcome. Pretty much every part of a dandelion plant can be put to some useful purpose. Dandelion leaves can be eaten as part of a salad. They have a mild, peppery taste. Many collect them together to make a woodland salad, with finely chopped dandelion leaves, wild garlic, and blanched nettle leaves. An infusion of the flowers in olive oil makes a fine remedy for aching muscles. A jar can be filled with flower heads, lightly pressed down, then filled with oil, sealed, and left for two to four weeks. Alternatively, the flowers can be treated with gently melted coconut oil, then solidified to make semi-solid balm. The roots can be cleaned and used in one of two ways. They can be finely sliced and sautéed as a vegetable. Or you can roast them on a very low heat. The dried roots are then put into a coffee grinder and powdered. The resultant powder is brewed like coffee, and tastes similar. It is very evident that our Magnificent Creator God has made a lot of very useful plants for us, like the dandelion. It makes little sense to suppose that so many uses could all have evolved. This is an example of God’s Master Plan for how we use the wonders of His creative power. |
| 5/1/2023 | When Isaac Asimov wrote his famous robot stories, we all thought we knew what robots looked like. They looked like us. Indeed, many of Asimov’s robots began to look indistinguishable from human beings, such as the iconic R Daneel Olivaw, who partnered with detective Elijah Baley in the sci-fi crime novel The Caves of Steel. As real-life robots began to appear in industry, making cars and operating other machinery, they did not look quite so anthropomorphic. Now in the 21st century, self-mobile robots are not necessarily built to walk like people. For example, we have already seen tiny flying robots about the size and shape of a cockroach – and liable to be just as beloved! A more recent robotic development has seen soft robots built to imitate jellyfish. Two layers of elastic polymer are joined – one stressed and one unstressed. Between the layers, air can be pumped, reversing the stressing and enabling the robot to swim through water. A third stress-free layer provides direction, and the whole machine is able to lift and carry fairly large cargos. The video accompanying the research shows strips of this robotic material being used out of water as a prehensile grip that would have sensitivity approaching that of human hands. As with all new technologies, it is to be hoped that good uses are found for it. God has given us dominion over this world, and technological developments, such as the soft robot, are methods by which humans can operate under this divine mandate. What a Magnificent Creator God we serve using the vast array of inventions He has taught us to make! |
| 4/30/2023 | In the early 1960s, some unusually blue star-like objects were observed in the universe, giving out radio frequencies along with visible light. There were a number of them. Through telescopes, they appeared to have fuzzy boundaries. They were given the name Quasi-Stellar Radio Sources – and this was quickly abbreviated to quasars. Another odd feature of these objects was the existence, in their spectra, of emission lines, similar to those of stars, but at the “wrong” frequencies. The emission lines in normal stars were known to be due to hydrogen, but the lines in the quasar’s spectrum had a wavelength about 15% longer than that of hydrogen in other stars, or in the laboratory. It was eventually realized that this effect must be due to red shift – but a red shift bigger than anything that had previously been seen. An application of Hubble’s Law – which shows that the red shift is proportional to the object’s distance – showed that the quasar 3C 273 was over 2 billion light years away and was therefore over 100 times more luminous than typical stars within the same cluster. The existence of such amazing objects once again underlines for us how true it is that the heavens declare the glory of our Magnificent Creator God. So many objects have now been discovered that astronomers give them numbers like 3C 273. How interesting it is, then, that the Bible tells us that our Magnificent Creator God knows the actual name of every single astronomical object!!! |
| 4/29/2023 | Plants make cellulose. Cellulose is a type of natural plastic made of many sugar molecules linked together. Scientists have known for years how to use the natural plastic qualities of cellulose to make things like cellophane and rayon. Scientists have also known that animals generate a similar natural plastic called chitin. Like cellulose, chitin is a carbohydrate made of long chains of sugar molecules. Chitin is found in the shells of all insects and crustaceans, like crabs. Each year the crabmeat industry had thrown away thousands of tons of chitin because scientists couldn’t figure out how to extract chitin from the shells in a usable form. Finally in 1975 scientists discovered how to remove the chitin from shells and change its form so it could be made into whatever forms they needed. Suture thread made from chitin dissolves in the body. This means that stitches don’t have to be removed, and it can be more easily knotted than regular suture thread. Suture thread made from chitin also causes no allergic reaction, and it seems to promote healing. It’s hard to believe that a crab shell, which is usually thrown away, could do so much! Food processing companies are even using a chemical made from chitin to recover protein from wastewater. Almost everything in the creation seems to have numerous uses for human needs. This is testimony that our Magnificent Creator God has made this universe for us and that He cares about our needs. In the Bible we learn that He has provided for our greatest need through His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 4/28/2023 | For many people, bats bring to mind words like “creepy,” “fangs,” “rabies,” and even “ugly.” However, over 450 years ago, Martin Luther marveled at the delicate beauty of the bat. He pronounced the creature an excellent witness to the skill and wisdom of the Creator. God must also like bats. Almost one-fourth of all mammals He created are bats! The flying fox bat has a wingspan of nearly six feet. Bumblebee bats, native to Thailand, are the smallest mammals known, weighing less than a penny. There are brilliantly patterned tropical bats called butterfly bats. And hundreds of species of tropical plants depend on bats as pollinators. Popular legend considers bats a serious part of the rabies problem. The truth is that raccoons, skunks, foxes, and even dogs and cats are more likely to have rabies. In fact, one study shows that in Pennsylvania you are more likely to find a rabid cow than a rabid bat. In reality, bats are delicate, helpful and intelligent creatures. A typical North American bat will eat about 600 mosquitoes an hour. Large colonies will consume between 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of insects per night! Bats can be trained, demonstrating their intelligence. And finally, an important warning. If you find sleeping bats, don’t disturb them. Even one such disturbance during sleep can be fatal since stored nutrition may be consumed by the disturbance before the next feeding cycle. So next time you see a bat, don’t recoil in fear. Rather, say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Magnificent Creator God who made both of you. |
| 4/27/2023 | One of the criticisms of solar power is that it is so variable. Clearly, a solar plant is going to produce no energy at night and an inadequate supply when the sky is cloudy. On the other hand, a suitable size plant could over-produce when sunlight is intense. Plants have a similar problem. The rapidly changing incidence of sunlight on their leaves could, conceivably, cause problems within the plant. However, researchers have discovered that plants have mechanisms to cope with these variations, and one such mechanism could answer the old question: “Why are plants green?” Plants produce high energy carbohydrate molecules from water vapor and carbon dioxide by the well-known process of photosynthesis. This endothermic reaction requires the input of energy in the form of light, and the reaction is catalyzed by the green dye chlorophyll. What many of us have not considered is why chlorophyll is green. White light is a mixture of all three primary colors – red, green and blue – which have increasing frequency and, hence, increasing energy, in that order. The remarkable thing about plants, therefore, is that they are absorbing light energy only at either end of the visible spectrum while rejecting – and reflecting – the middle of the spectrum, which is green. Researchers have shown that this selective absorption of certain frequencies minimizes “noise” and, therefore, enables the plant to cope with rapidly changing conditions of sunshine. Our Magnificent Creator God, in His Creation, has literally thought of everything. No wonder He said “and it was good”! |
| 4/26/2023 | As creationists, we spend a lot of time working on our models about how we think the Flood could have happened, developing new models. The old vapor canopy model has long since been superseded by more biblical and more scientific models, such as Catastrophic Plate Tectonics or the newer Vertical Impact Tectonics. What we should not lose sight of is the reason why God sent the Flood. The reason for the coming of the Flood is given in Genesis 6:5. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” If God had chosen to destroy everyone and everything, He would have been just to do so. But God also had a plan of salvation, which we read about in Genesis 6:8, which, in my opinion, is the most beautiful verse of the early chapters of Genesis. Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. Hebrews 11 tells us: “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” It follows, then, that Noah was saved by grace through faith. And in Ephesians 2:8 reminds Christians: “By grace you have been saved through faith”. There has only ever been one method of salvation – by grace, through faith. We just have that little bit more knowledge than Noah, so that we know Who bought that salvation, and how. We owe thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for this world and all that is in it and for the everlasting life we have because of Him. |
| 4/25/2023 | Garlic. Even say the word and some people move away to give you some distance. Others gather around because, to them, garlic helps make the meal. Garlic has begun to attract the attention of medical researchers as well. At the Tagore Medical College in India, researcher Arun Bordia kept track of 432 heart attack survivors for three years. During that time, half of the survivors drank the juice from six to ten cloves of fresh garlic each day, while others took a garlic-scented drink with no garlic in it. Over the three-year period, the garlic group had 32% fewer heart attacks and 45% fewer deaths than the other group. Research in the United States with chickens, who metabolize cholesterol in much the same way as humans, suggests a reason for these results. Chickens that were fed aged garlic extract showed a 50% reduction in the kind of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Medical researchers are also looking at some interesting evidence that garlic may help prevent some forms of cancer, especially stomach cancer. When the Creator made the heavens and Earth, He knew that humans would disobey Him, destroying the creation with sin. He also knew that in doing so we would bring disease and death into the world. We can thank our Magnificent Creator God that He stocked the Earth with substances that could be used to treat some of the earthly effects of sin. However, we can thank Him even more joyfully that He provided the full cure for sin for each of us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ! |
| 4/24/2023 | Our eyes do more work and tell more about us than many people realize. These amazing organs are so closely tied into the brain that they have been referred to as part of the brain. Your eyes were among your first organs to form. Within four weeks of fertilization, an unborn infant’s eyes begin to form. Interestingly enough, many newborns can move their eyes independently of each other, which can be a shock to unsuspecting parents. Usually the eyes are working together within a few months. However, those eye muscles will get more of a workout during our lifetimes than any other voluntary muscle. During any 24-hour period, our eyes will move about 100,000 times. That’s equivalent to walking 50 miles every day! Studies have shown that people with dark eyes generally have faster reaction times than people with light-colored eyes. Brown-eyed people generally are better at tennis while blue-eyed people generally do better at golf. Our eyes secrete different kinds of tears. Normal tears contain bacteria-fighting chemicals produced by cells in the lining of the eyelid. Emotional tears contain hormones released by the body in response to stress, including a natural painkiller. One more eye fact: The vitamin A in carrots is necessary for the proper working of the rods in your eye. The rods themselves are responsible for night vision. On a clear, dark night a healthy eye can see the light from a single candle 25 miles away! Only our Magnificent Creator God could have designed and made such a unique organ as the human eye!!! |
| 4/23/2023 | “Dog bites man” is not an unusual headline. However, “Man bites dog” would usually get people’s attention. If that’s true, the headline “Leeches teach physicians” should capture everyone’s attention. Physicians used leeches in bloodletting treatments well into the 19th century. They were used to treat everything from headaches to heart disease. As the 20th century matured, the medical use of leeches became not only a memory but a symbol of how backward medicine used to be. Now, as the 21st century is underway, leeches are again a part of modern medicine. To obtain their food, leeches inject a powerful blood thinner called hirudin. This hirudin is what interests modern medical researchers in leeches. Doctors have for many years been using a blood thinner called heparin to dissolve blood clots, such as those associated with heart attacks. But researchers are finding that hirudin is ten times as effective as heparin in dissolving clots, and in addition it works directly to prevent clotting. The studies continue. However, medical researchers are convinced that the blood thinner which leeches taught them how to make offers a powerful medicine. Should the possibilities presented by this modern medicine be realized, many lives that are now lost due to blood clotting may soon be routinely saved. Our Magnificent Creator God of the heavens and Earth is so wise and generous that He can teach even modern science some new things through a seemingly simple creature like the leech. |
| 4/22/2023 | They are the only cells in the human body that repeatedly die and self-regenerate throughout life. They are probably the only cells in the body that inspired a Broadway play named after them. And science considers them so interesting that several branches of science are studying them. I am talking about hair cells. As scientists are learning more about hair, they are coming to greater appreciation of, as one researcher put it, hair’s bewildering biology. A Harvard molecular biologist admitted that one of the reasons we know so little about hair is that scientists have avoided studying this complex structure. The average scalp has about 100,000 hairs growing at any one time. Each hair follicle produces hair for about two to five years, followed by a rest period of four to six months. A miniature assembly line of cells divides within the follicle, pushing older hair cells upward through the skin. Pigmentation is added as each new cell is produced. When the follicle is at rest, it shrivels and many of its cells die. However, seed cells, promising new life to the follicle, hide within it waiting for the signal to spring back to life. As humans grow older, the resting time of the follicles increases and growing time decreases, especially in men. So if you find yourself balding, you’re not necessarily losing your hair. It’s just that your hair is spending more time resting than it used to. Our Magnificent Creator God tells us that He cares so much about each one of us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head! |
| 4/21/2023 | We don’t often think about our sense of smell. While our noses are on the job all the time, we note an odor only when it is unusual. Most of the time, the scents around us contribute, unnoticed, to our overall impression of our surroundings. It’s hard to remain tense at the beach. Simply the mention of the water and waves, the sand and sun brings back to memory the last trip to the beach and starts relaxing a person. However therapeutic these elements of the beach are, scientists have found that the one beach fixture that is probably most responsible for relaxing us is the smell. The smelly chemical that utility companies put in natural gas so that we can smell leaks is methyl mercaptan. This chemical is also produced by rotting meat. The human nose is extremely sensitive to this smell. We can detect as little as one 400-billionth of a gram of it in a quart of air. Doctors have long known that their noses are helpful in diagnosing disease. A person is brought into the emergency room in a coma. It’s very likely that the doctor will smell the patient’s breath as he tries to discover the problem. A sweet smell could indicate diabetes. The smell of ammonia could indicate a kidney malfunction. Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic. Diphtheria can be identified by a sickeningly sweet odor, and people with the plague smell like apples. A patient who smells like freshly baked bread may have typhoid. While we seldom think about our sense of smell, it’s a wonderful gift from our Magnificent Creator God for which we owe Him thanks. |
| 4/20/2023 | Do your eyes ever play tricks on you? Our eyes regularly play tricks on us with the help of our brains. Repeated research has shown that the images we see are not exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes and brains work together to construct the images we call sight. It’s not that our eyes are out to hoodwink us. Most of the time our eyes are working to help us. Working together, our brain and eyes add logical details to the images we see. Each of us has a blind spot in our vision because there are no vision cells where the optic nerve is. Instead of showing us a spot of nothing at the blind point in our field of vision, our brain invents an image from surrounding details. Your brain pulls the same trick on you when you proofread your completed manuscript. While others can still find typos, you may not. Your brain knows what you are saying and so it automatically shows you a repaired version, making many of your typing errors invisible. Your pupils can reveal your thoughts. Studies show that when seeing unpleasant scenes the pupils retract. Pleasant or interesting scenes cause the pupils to open wider. Charles Darwin wrote, “To suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” We don’t often agree with Charles Darwin, but this time we do! Our Magnificent Creator God once more demonstrates that His Wisdom is above all wisdom!!! |
| 4/19/2023 | In recent years, our knowledge about Pluto has multiplied over and over again. Despite its status being downgraded to that of a mere Dwarf Planet rather than a planet proper, NASA determined to send out a space probe called New Horizons in January 2006. New Horizons finally reached Pluto in January 2015 and sent back invaluable data for about 18 months, with the result that we now probably know more about the surface of Pluto than that of parts of Earth’s ocean floor. Some surface evidence has caused scientists to think that maybe Pluto was a hot body when it came into existence. This heat could still be there, prompting speculation that there could be a liquid ocean beneath the icy frozen surface. Whenever water is discovered in the Solar System, thoughts turn to the possibility of life having evolved – especially as Pluto’s surface shows evidence of the existence of methane and ammonia molecules, which scientists always think could provide a synthetic route to organic compounds. Such interpretations ignore the fact that Earth was created separately from, and three days before, the creation of the other stars and planets. God in His wisdom chose the Earth to be the sole focus of life. |
| 4/18/2023 | In the past we have discussed individual studies that link good health to religious commitment. It’s always easy to find individual studies to prove almost any point. So researchers did a statistical analysis of 42 different studies made since 1977. The 42 studies that were examined involved over 125,000 people, mostly Christian and Jewish. The analysis, conducted by the National Institute for Healthcare Research, distinguished between public and private religious activity. Public religious activity included attending worship services and volunteering time for church activities. Private religious activity included praying alone and “internal spiritual feelings.” While there are some who question these studies, they have consistently shown that religiously involved people live longer, healthier lives. However, the researchers who analyzed these studies arrived at a new conclusion as they analyzed the differences between public and private religious activity. They concluded that public religious involvement, as opposed to private or no involvement, showed a statistically important relationship to higher health and survival rates. Two thousand years ago, the writer of the book of Hebrews encouraged believers not to neglect assembling themselves together for worship on a regular basis. Like burning embers removed from the fire, when believers fail to be a regular part of their faith community, believers’ faith, too, cools to the temperature around it. Our Magnificent Creator God created everyone for a purpose and part of that purpose is to “assemble ourselves together” as He said, that we might love Him and each other and grow spiritually as a body of believers. |
| 4/17/2023 | The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri 26 trillion miles away. That is 26 with 12 zeros after it. 26,000,000,000,000. When our Magnificent Creator God in His awesome power creates something, distance is of no concern. |
| 4/16/2023 | Many people know that, despite its appearance, coral is actually a tiny animal. Even a small coral growth may be made up of billions of tiny animals, each living inside its limestone skeleton. What many people don’t know is that coral cannot live without the help of algae – a plant. Thousands of one-celled algae live in the tiny stomach of each coral polyp. The polyp requires the waste products of the algae to complete its nutrition requirements and to get the calcium with which it builds reefs. In return, the polyp’s stomach provides an ideal protected living place for the algae. Incidentally, the wonderful colors in living coral come from the algae in each polyp’s stomach. Evolutionists have said that it must take millions of years for the tiny polyps to build large coral reefs – like the 2,000-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, incidentally, is considered the largest structure ever built by living organisms. However, it has now been shown that coral polyps can double their own weight in just over 10 days! As a result, the claim of millions of years for the age of the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by a factor of 40! Many of the long-age figures claimed by evolutionists have had to be drastically revised downward as we have learned more about our Magnificent Creator God’s creation. The resulting figures fit the Bible’s account of history much more closely. |
| 4/15/2023 | It’s not very pretty, nor is it graceful, but Colombia’s rock-climbing catfish has a unique ability among fish. Perhaps there are days when a salmon, trying to make it up a waterfall, wishes that it could simply climb the rocks. The rock-climbing catfish’s climbing equipment begins with a powerful sucker mouth. Once it attaches itself to a rock, it can stay stuck despite any torrent. The rock-climbing catfish also has a bony plate on its belly that helps it hold its place while it repositions its sucker a little further up the rocks. The plate has fins with tiny, backward-pointing teeth. These teeth dig into the rock and prevent slipping. The catfish’s third special feature is a set of powerful muscles to control the plate. Once the rock-climbing catfish has attached its sucker to the rock, it pulls up its stomach plate and anchors it. With its body anchored, it moves its sucker up the face of the rock and repeats the process. Following this method, the rock-climbing catfish can walk its way up a 20-foot rock wall against the torrent of a waterfall in about 30 minutes! Our Magnificent Creator God thought of everything in His Master Design for every creature! |
| 4/14/2023 | By the time she had returned from her adventures in Oz, Dorothy had learned that “There’s no place like home.” As we discover more planets outside the solar system, we are learning that there’s no place like Earth or even the solar system. While we usually think of planets orbiting a star, astronomers are now finding planets that simply float through space without a home star. Of the 15 known homeless planets, 13 of them were recently found in the Orion Nebula. These most recent discoveries were made using a specialized camera that examines the heavens for infrared and near infrared light. Scientists speculate that the planets might have escaped from orbit around some star. Others speculate that the planets are failed brown dwarf stars. To become a brown dwarf, a body has to be at least as big as 13 Jupiters. The smallest of these planets is as big as 8 Jupiters, making its gravity far too strong for any life that we know about. To make matters worse, temperatures on these planets would not support life, either. Analysis of the light coming from these planets reveals that their surface temperatures are nearly 5000° F. These homeless planets are part of God’s illustration to us of how He specially designed our solar system and Earth just for us. The Bible tells us that the Word made flesh, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Who gave His life for us, was also the Instrument our Magnificent Creator God used to create the entire universe. |
| 4/13/2023 | A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day [65–70 times a minute] with no time off for rest, to get most of us through seventy years or more. Our Magnificent Creator God’s master design for His master creation is infinite in detail and function. |
| 4/12/2023 | We take the sky for granted. It is just there. Yet, whether it is covered with cloud, or clear, we do not consider the fact that, during the daytime, all of the sky is somewhat light. In particular, on a clear day, the sky appears blue. The blueness itself is remarkable, given that the sun is yellow, but why is the sky any color at all? Having seen photographs from the Moon, taken by the Apollo Astronauts, we know that even when the sun is out, the rest of the sky is black. Sunlight comes from the Sun, so the blueness of the sky on Earth must be because of light coming from elsewhere. Of course, all the light is from the Sun originally. But that light has been scattered. So there is scattered light coming at us from many different directions when we look at the sky. The reason for this scattering of light is a phenomenon known as Raleigh scattering – named for British physicist Lord Raleigh. Sunlight is scattered by molecules and particles in the atmosphere. It turns out that the mix of molecules and particles that we have in Earth’s atmosphere scatters light more strongly at shorter wavelengths than at longer wavelengths. Of the colors of visible light, blue has a shorter wavelength than red. So it appears to us that blue light is coming to us from all directions of the sky because that light has been scattered. When we learn the mechanism for something, it should not spoil our wonder at it but should cause us all the more to praise our Magnificent Creator God for His attention to detail! |
| 4/11/2023 | A gypsy moth caterpillar infestation can strip the leaves from large numbers of trees, threatening the trees’ lives. Since they don’t have a means of escape, it doesn’t seem as if the poor trees have much of a chance. But botanists were tipped off to the possibility that trees may not be all that defenseless when they began to investigate why only a few trees were badly damaged by insects in an infected grove while most stood unharmed. They discovered that when facing a threat like gypsy moth caterpillars, trees begin to defend themselves by sounding the alarm. A large variety of trees – including beeches, poplars, sugar maples and red oaks – communicate with each other. Scientists believe the trees communicate by releasing chemicals called pheromones into the air. What they now know is that before insects attacking one tree can get to the tree next door, the second tree has already begun defending itself. How do they defend themselves? When under attack or notified by other trees of attack, most trees begin to manufacture an array of poisons. Some of the poisons make leaves impossible to digest, while others kill the insects outright. Some make as many as eight poisons at once, and many can change the poisons that are made from year to year. Our Magnificent Creator God’s concern for living things extends even to plants. If He sees to this detailed level of care for trees, can there be anything in our lives that is too small for His loving concern? |
| 4/10/2023 | During World War II, Hitler and his Nazi Army killed one third of all of the then living Jews, six million of them. God’s magnificent plan of salvation is so perfect it would even have allowed Hitler to go to heaven if he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. When our Magnificent Creator God said that all who call on the name of The Lord would be saved He meant ALL! |
| 4/9/2023 | Many plants reproduce simply by cloning. The most obvious example of cloning that comes to mind is the dandelion. Unless you get all of the main dandelion root out of the ground, each piece of the root can sprout another dandelion, identical to the parent. The walking fern reproduces by cloning too. It moves across the countryside, albeit slowly, by producing new plants. A new plant is generated wherever the tips of its leaves touch the ground. Each new plant is identical to the parent. The bamboo reproduces through underground stems. The different species of bamboo live anywhere from 20 to 120 years. During their life spans, they produce only by cloning. Then they flower – once. When it’s time for a particular species to flower, every member of that species, no matter where in the world it grows, flowers gloriously. Each flower can have as many as 100 pollen-producing stamens. Once the seeds are ripe and scattered, every member of that species in the world dies. At this point, the entire species exists only in the scattered seeds. This is brilliant testimony to a recent creation of all bamboos at the same time. If evolution produced them and the forces of change worked on them for millions of years, one would think that all members of the same species would no longer be in perfect synchronization. Bamboo makes a strong testimony for the recent creation by our Magnificent Creator God reported in Genesis! |
| 4/8/2023 | Many plants, especially orchids, offer different ploys to fool insects into pollinating them. Each of these ploys shows planning, design and the ability to create the design that will work. That there are so many examples makes it impossible for any rational person to believe that mindless, impersonal forces could have made these plants. Four different groups of orchids produce flowers that look so much like the female of the insect that pollinates them that pollinators will try to mate with them. The Brassia orchid found in southern Florida produces a flower that mimics the prey of its pollinator, the spider wasp. The flower is so designed that as the wasp stings its supposed prey – really the flower – pollen is deposited on his head. The pollen is then carried to a nearby female flower and deposited in just the right place during another attack. Another orchid imitates an aggressive swarm of bees as it blows in the wind. The strongly territorial bees that live in the area swarm and attack the flowers. In the process, they transfer the pollen from male to female flowers. The female flowers of at least 50 species of Mexican orchids offer fake pollen to lure pollen-eating insects that have been feeding on male flowers. Many of these insect-orchid relationships are so tightly interlocked that neither could survive without the other. This speaks of a planned creation. It also bears witness that all forms of life came into being in a relatively short time, not over millions of years as evolutionists would have it. Our Magnificent Creator God had all of this planned before the beginning of time – before the world existed! |
| 4/7/2023 | There has been a considerable amount of interest over exoplanets recently. This is due, in large part, to information gleaned from the Kepler spacecraft, which was launched in 2009. Data started being made available from the spacecraft in 2014. There is too much data to be studied quickly by NASA or anyone else, so the data has been made freely available, and anyone with the expertise to analyze the data can do so. This has led to the discovery of a lot of new exoplanets. My friend and fellow creation speaker, Dr. Jason Lisle, discovered a planet using this data and made that discovery known in May 2017. What is an exoplanet? An exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than our own sun. You might suppose that they were discovered by peering through a telescope in the same way that planets like Uranus and Neptune and the dwarf planet Pluto were discovered. However, this is not the case. The data released by Kepler, orbiting beyond the haze of the atmosphere, comprises of readings of brightness from many stars. If a planet orbits across the surface of that star, then the brightness of the star will be imperceptibly, but measurably, diminished. If observed dips in the stellar brightness are observed regularly, then it can be assumed that this regularity is due to the regularity of an orbiting planet. In considering these discoveries, one is impressed by the beauty and majesty of God’s creation. One is also impressed by the talents that He has given to those who analyze such data for these discoveries. The key word herein is “Discovery”. We are always amazed at what our Magnificent Creator God has created – but that’s just what we know about today – there is no way to imagine just what remains for us to discover – we may never know in this life just what is really “out there”. |
| 4/6/2023 | The largest known beetle in the world is the aptly named goliath beetle. This African beetle can become almost as large as a mouse. Dinosaurs were not the largest animals ever to live. The great blue whale holds that honor. The smallest mammal in the world is smaller than many insects. A newly discovered species of bat in Thailand weighs only six one-hundredths of an ounce. Such extremes might lead some to wonder whether those giant insects we see in the movies would ever develop. Could a spider grow to be as large as a house? You will be happy to know that no spider or any other insect could grow as large as a house. We can be sure of this because of the way insects breathe. Insects breathe through small tubes along their bodies. These tubes provide oxygen directly to their internal tissues. If an insect were to grow too large, these tubes could not get enough oxygen to the tissues. This is because the larger the creature, the more internal living tissue that requires oxygen. You and I have lungs that provide a network of surfaces equal to the size of a tennis court. An insect our size would need a body that has the surface area of a tennis court, too, which is an impossibility. Even though different creatures have different organs to supply their needs, each creature has just the right organs for its needs. This is just another sign of our Magnificent Creator God’s wisdom. |
| 4/5/2023 | Researchers in the 1950s and ’60s established that the octopus is quite intelligent and can learn different visual patterns. Octopi have very large brains with large areas reserved for storing information. New research has shown that they are even more intelligent than earlier studies revealed. These findings run counter to evolutionary theory, which says that intelligence evolves in social species to help them deal with social relationships. The octopus is not a social animal and operates alone. Unlike other animals, octopi use a variety of strategies to solve the same problem. They can use their eight powerful arms to open clams, or they can drill through the shell and inject a fast-acting poison. In the laboratory, octopi kept in isolation were given a floating plastic bottle. The bored octopuses quickly devised a variety of games to play with the bottle – a sure sign of intelligence. The Creator gave the octopus the ability to learn a lot so it could cope with its unusual way of life. Octopi begin life as tiny plankton that drift with the ocean currents. When they finally settle to the bottom, they may find themselves in any of the many habitats provided by the ocean and face any variety of predators and food sources. Thus, our Magnificent Creator God designed them with the ability to learn how to adapt to a large variety of habitats and situations. Just like He designed us… |
| 4/4/2023 | New research is revealing the health benefits of eating nuts. While eating peanuts has been shown to reduce heart disease risks by lowering triglycerides, tree nuts offer many more benefits. People often worry about the fat in nuts. However, most of that fat is the good kind that protects hearts, while at the same time satisfying the body’s need for fat. The result is that nut eaters can lose weight and keep it off. In one Canadian study, those trying to lose weight while satisfying their fat needs with nuts lost an average of nine pounds over 18 months. Over the same trial period, those trying to lose weight with a low-fat diet actually gained an average of six pounds. Another study showed that people who ate two ounces of nuts four or five times a week lowered their risk of heart attack by 50 percent. Yet another study showed that women who ate only five ounces of nuts per week were one-third less likely to have a heart attack than those who ate nuts infrequently. Several studies have shown that almonds, macadamia nuts, or walnuts lowered high cholesterol by ten percent. Other studies have shown that nut eating can lower the risk of prostate cancer by 30 percent and may lower the risk of colon and stomach cancers. Nuts are a great gift from God and truly are among the best fruits of the land. Chance would not have evolved all these health benefits in a food clearly designed for us to eat. A loving Magnificent Creator God made them for our good!!! |
| 4/3/2023 | The Bible tells us that a young shepherd named David killed the giant Philistine, Goliath, with a very accurately sling stone (1 Samuel 17:40, 49). The Bible states that the Israelites used slings as weapons of war (2 Kings 3:25). Sling stones from Khirbet el-Maqatir (West Bank, Israel) are not naturally rounded. They all have evidence of being shaped by man. Archaeologists are finding evidence that confirms these Biblical stories. Sling stones were important weapons in an ancient army’s arsenal.At one excavation site in Israel, 10 miles north of Jerusalem, sling stones have been found in almost every area of the dig. Interestingly, the site is located in the territory given to the tribe of Benjamin. This tribe was known for an elite corps of slingers (Judges 20:15-16; 1 Chronicles 12:2), many of whom were left-handed slingers. 700 of them could each “sling a stone at a hair and not miss. The best method of releasing a stone from a sling is by an underhand motion. It is unclear when men first started slinging stones instead of throwing them. Yet, once known, it did not take long to learn that stones could be slung faster, farther, and more accurately, than they could be thrown. Early slingers also found smoother, rounded, stones were far more effective than any other shape.Ancient hand slings generally consisted of a single long strip of leather or woven wool, with a central “pocket” for the stone. The longer the sling, the greater its range. Long-range slings were about 3 feet long (0.9 meters). Slingers are often visualized as releasing overhead, yet the best way to utilize a sling is by an underhand motion, like a softball pitcher. Elaborate wind-ups were wasted motion. One windup, like a good softball pitcher, was sufficient. Before development of the modern compound bow, ancient slingers were as effective as archers and served as an important part of any military force. Surprisingly, a good slinger hurled a stone as far and accurately as a good archer. Roman military texts recommended archery target practice at about 200 yards (183 meters). Slingers are known to hurl their projectiles even farther, as much as 440 yards (402 meters) (a quarter of a mile / 0.40 km). As for accuracy, one ancient writer noted that the best slingers “would wound not merely the heads of their enemies, but any part of the face at which they might have aimed.” Experiments demonstrate that missiles leave a sling in excess of 60 miles per hour (97 km/h).One Roman writer noted that opponents in leather armor were in far greater danger from sling missiles than arrows. Even if the stone did not penetrate the armor, it was capable of inflicting a fatal internal injury. Unarmored bodies were easily penetrated by sling stones. An ancient medical book included instructions for removing lead and stone sling missiles from the bodies of wounded soldiers.While typical sling stones used by the Greek and Roman armies were the size of golf balls, different cultures liked different sizes. This is just another piece of our Magnificent Creator God’s design before anything existed!!! |
| 4/2/2023 | For a moment think of the uniqueness of the human body. You, friend, are not a blob of protoplasm but a living organism of some 50 trillion cells. Your brain weighs about a kilo—roughly 2 ½ to 3 pounds. It consists of two hemispheres of gray matter connected by an interface called a corpus collosum. Daily, 10,000 thoughts flit in and out of your brain. A hundred billion neurons process information. Its complexity is something that we are just beginning to understand. Your heart pumps 18,000 gallons of blood daily through 75,000 miles of vessels and arteries. Try building something like that. Then there is the iris of your eye that automatically opens and closes depending on the intensity of light and lubricates itself with fluid called tears. Your hand, though, is perhaps the most amazing part of your body. Dr. Paul Brand, the great hand surgeon of the past century, believed it proved your uniqueness as a human being as does nothing else. Think about it…our Magnificent Creator God simply spoke this magnificent creation into existence!!! |
| 4/1/2023 | There are at least four known types of orchids that effectively pretend to be female insects. They are so good at this ruse that they attract the attentions of male pollinators. That there are four different varieties that do this makes it clear that this trickery isn’t due to chance. The Creator does not want us to make the mistake of thinking that He doesn’t exist. The Ophrys group of orchids are found around the Mediterranean. Ophrys orchids produce flowers that look and smell so much like the insect that pollinates it, the male insect will mate with the flower. In the process, he picks up the pollen. The pollen is then carried to another flower, thus ensuring the next generation. The flowers even mimic the sheen of the female’s wings, the furry fringe on her abdomen, and her antennae. The Cryptostylus orchid, found in New Guinea and Australia, mimics the female of the wasp that pollinates it. The Cryptostylus does this so perfectly that it even moves as a mating female. The same is true of an orchid found in the Andes that is pollinated by a particular species of fly through the same ruse. God has much more in mind than just letting us know that He is. He wants us to see that He is intimately involved with His creatures. Through the perfect life of Jesus Christ, and His suffering, death and resurrection, He has removed the final barriers between us and Himself. With the barrier of sin removed by forgiveness, He may be even more intimately involved with each of us on a personal basis. Our Magnificent Creator God designed, planned, and created all things for our good! |
| 3/31/2023 | All the textbooks inform us that the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second. This is the absolute speed limit of the universe, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, we have always been told. Should anything travel faster than that, Einstein’s theory falls. While the certainty of the speed of light as an absolute limit has provided comfort for many, new research may point to a universe that is stranger than we can imagine. It all began when an Italian researcher showed that microwaves could travel through the air at speeds slightly faster than light. Then an American researcher decided to see what would happen to the speed of light in a special chamber. He built a clear chamber filled with cesium gas. When a pulse of light was sent through it, the light went through the chamber at 300 times the speed of light. This is so fast that the main pulse of light exited the chamber before it went in! This strange effect is a result of the unique wave action of light. For this reason, researchers say that Einstein’s theory remains viable. Still, this finding has led to a debate among physicists over whether a message could be sent faster than the speed of light into the past. This research should remind us that the universe is the creation of an unlimited, almighty God. While scientific research can bring many benefits, it cannot be too dogmatic about its interpretation of the universe. Only the Bible, which is the very Word of the unlimited, almighty Magnificent Creator God, offers absolute knowledge. |
| 3/30/2023 | When bees are threatened by some diseases or predators, they act like sick children – they get a fever. More specifically, they give their nest a fever, sometimes raising its temperature to levels nearly fatal to themselves. Bees are cold-blooded, but they can generate heat by flexing their flight muscles while holding their wings still. It has long been known that bees can generate temperatures as high as 96.8° (F) to keep the nursery nice and cozy. Researchers have found that this ability is used to cure a sick hive. One of the more dangerous threats to the bees’ nest is the chalkboard fungus. Researchers noticed that bees raised the temperature of the nursery when threatened with the fungus. They then tested the effect of the temperature increase by introducing chalkboard fungus spores into three experimental hives. Even before the larvae showed symptoms of infection, bees raised the temperature in all three hives. While several larvae mummified in one hive, no larvae in the other two hives showed infection. Other researchers have also found that bees use the same strategy on giant hornets. The bees cannot sting through the hornet’s tough armor. So, when invaded, bees raise the hive’s temperature to over 116°(F). That’s enough to kill the hornet, but one degree hotter would be fatal to the bees. Our Magnificent Creator God has given His creatures important abilities to gain and keep physical health. But when it comes to spiritual health, we must rely completely on what God’s Son, Jesus Christ, has done to give us that spiritual health!!! |
| 3/29/2023 | There are some pastors and teachers who tell us that it does not matter what we believe about Genesis. It does not matter if there were really six 24-hour days, or millions of years. It does not matter if there was death before Adam’s sin. It does not matter if Adam were not a real person, but an allegory. These are often people who tell us that they believe the Bible to be true. But, somehow, our literalist “interpretation” offends them – even though we do not give an interpretation of Genesis; we simply read what it says and believe it. The same pastors will not have the same problem with the New Heavens and the New Earth that God will one day provide. Whatever your eschatology, few people expect the New Heavens and New Earth to emerge after millions of years of evolution. They expect that God will make these places probably in an instant. They believe that the idea of a world without death in Genesis is a myth. Yet, they quote Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more death. How can they expect a new place with literally no death if the deathless paradise at the beginning of time were just a myth. Revelation 22:3 tells us that in the world to come there will be no more curse. These pastors expect this to be literally true, yet they do not believe in an earthly paradise in Genesis 1 in which there was no curse until Adam sinned. But all these issues fall into place when we choose to believe our Magnificent Creator God’s word. |
| 3/28/2023 | The cockeyed squid lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone” where sunlight barely filters through the deep waters. The squid’s nickname is a reference to its two extremely different eyes: the left eye develops over time to become considerably larger than the right—almost twice as big. Scientists studying the mollusk have deduced that the squid uses its right eye, the smaller one, to look down into the darker depths. The larger, left eye, gazes upward, toward the sunlight. Our Magnificent Creator God thought of every need for every creature He ever made. |
| 3/27/2023 | The Andean condor is the world’s largest soaring bird. With a wingspan of more than ten feet, condors can soar for up to five hours, covering one hundred miles, without flapping their wings once! In one study, a group of condors spent just one percent of their time aloft flapping their wings. Our Magnificent Creator God saw to every need of every creature He ever made. |
| 3/26/2023 | Two groups of tropical vines rely for reproduction on the world’s only known species of pollen-eating butterfly. Neither vine has very showy flowers, nor do their flowers have any scent. However, they don’t need to attract pollinators because the Heliconius butterfly depends on the pollen produced by the vines for its food. So the butterflies don’t go far from their food source. Since the butterfly depends on the pollen, the vines produce many more male flowers than female. This keeps its army of pollinators well fed. Being messy eaters, the butterflies end up with pollen all over them. But what would attract the butterfly to the female flower, which can be up to 20 feet away? Two tricks are used. First, a female flower usually grows close to where a male flower has just withered. Second, the female flower, while producing no pollen, looks just like the male flower to invite the butterfly’s attention. Did you see the intelligence in this arrangement? If only chance were involved, why would the only known species of pollen-eating butterfly be found with the only known vines that rely on their services? This is a very big planet! If there is no design in this arrangement, why should these vines offer female flowers that look like the males so that they will be pollinated? It is so clear that these butterflies were custom-made for these vines, and the vines were made for the butterflies. This is a witness to a personal Magnificent Creator God Who is personally involved in life on Earth! |
| 3/25/2023 | The priests who served at the Temple began their “priesthood” at the age of thirty, having studied for twenty-eight years the priestly duties and responsibilities. The number of Levites serving the Temple in one capacity or another was 38,000, and of these, 24,000 of them were to carry out the work of the house of the Lord. It’s interesting to note that 4,000 of the 38,000 were “to praise the Lord” with instruments which King David had made to be used for “praising the Lord”. It was the “harp” that King David had made and used to “praise the Lord”. He also wrote many of the Psalms by using his harp. All of these directions and instructions were the work of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 3/24/2023 | Bees depend on a good memory of their surroundings to make the thousands of trips necessary to keep their hive in operation. Each day a single bee must make trips to hundreds of flowers, some as far as a mile from the hive. Scientists have long wondered how the tiny bee can remember what may be dozens of square miles of territory. When a bee finds a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and does a dance for the other bees. This dance tells them where a new find is located. Researchers have studied this in detail and can now interpret these dances. Researchers from Princeton University tricked a bee into dancing out a location that turned out to be in the middle of a nearby lake. After receiving the message, the other members of the hive simply ignored their fellow worker. She kept dancing, but no one would believe her. Only later, when the dance clearly said that the flowers were on the opposite side of the lake, did the other bees pay attention and check out the flowers. Researchers are now wondering whether bees keep a mental map of their surroundings. How else could they tell when someone gives them a false location? Evolutionary researchers are trying to figure out how such an “evolutionarily simple” creature as the bee could be so intelligent. However, the Bible makes clear that intelligence is not related to evolution. It is the gift of an all-wise Magnificent Creator God. |
| 3/23/2023 | The human body, according to medical science, contains 37 trillion cells that reproduce themselves every seven years. Each one of the 37 trillion cells performs 10,000 different chemical functions, according to the late Dr. Ralph Byron of the City of Hope Cancer Clinic, yet all of them just work together to produce a healthy body. When you get tired, you cannot say, “All right, cell number 843,291, get to work. You are not pulling your share of the load.” All of these cells are linked together by nerve cells tied into a brain containing 100 billion cells (give or take a few). I hesitate to say that these 100 billion nerve cells are tied into a computer‑like device called the human brain since the human brain is far superior to any computer ever created. The eminent neuroscientist Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University in Israel says, “Our ability to understand all the details of even one brain is practically zero.” Only our Magnificent Creator God in all of His brilliance and magnificence could have thought up such a complex piece of creation. |
| 3/22/2023 | Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria’s “eyes” and “ears.” The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just “simple” forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction – and even thinking – all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Magnificent Creator God Who made us! |
| 3/21/2023 | How does your nose work? Medical researchers admit that they don’t know. Your nose performs an extremely unlikely job. It senses invisible molecules in the air and turns each molecule into a unique sensation that is sent to the brain. If the fact that molecules floating in the air could be detected was a modern discovery, it would be hailed as the scientific discovery of the century! Medical researchers do know that the roof of your nose cavity contains about 10 million cells that are wired directly into the brain. The nervous system that connects your olfactory cells to your brain is so large and complex that its surface area is several times greater than the surface area of your body. Researchers also know that your sense of smell is important to your sense of taste. For example, that’s why – when you have a head cold – chocolate tastes like a flavorless waxy paste. In this case, what you taste in your mouth has more to do with what is happening in your nose than on your tongue. Many creatures, including birds, can sense odors. Farmers who had difficulty with birds eating as much as 20 percent of the food set out in feed lots discovered that birds hate the smell of grapes. When they laced the feed with grape scent, the birds left it alone, but the cattle didn’t seem to mind. Every detail in the creation of everything that has ever existed was planned and created by our Magnificent Creator God. No detail was too small. |
| 3/20/2023 | What keeps the big-bodied bumblebee with those little, stubby wings in the air? Scientists are still trying to learn the secret of bumblebee flight. And while they are learning some astonishing things about the bumblebee, they still don’t know how he does it. Scientists have been testing bumblebees by monitoring their energy use, placing them in wind tunnels, and measuring their oxygen use. No, they haven’t been able to make little oxygen masks for the bees – bumblebees have 24 breathing holes. Scientists have learned that a flying bumblebee flaps its wings 160 times per second and consumes the equivalent of 180 candy bars per hour! A flying bee uses the same amount of oxygen for its body weight as a flying bird or a bat. However, unlike birds, the bumblebee uses no more oxygen when hovering than when flying. This is only one of the discoveries that contradict scientists’ theories. In fact, the director of the latest studies on bumblebee flight admits that they still have no idea how the bumblebee stays in the air. He warns other scientists to stop using the current theories on the subject because they are far too simple. Of course, our Magnificent Creator God knows how to make a bumblebee fly, even if the best of modern science can’t figure it out. This should help us to see that when scientists tell us they have figured out how everything could have been made without a Creator, they don’t know what they’re talking about. In His great magnificence God did it and that’s all there is to it!!! |
| 3/19/2023 | Perhaps no type of animal has been used more in biological research than the fruit fly. Certain biological processes such as reproduction or genetic replication are similar in most eukaryote organisms, so observing these in fruit flies might, unlikely as it may seem, have implications for how the processes work in humans. The great volume of academic research which uses the fruit fly as the subject can be seen by the fact that, to date, eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to work involving drosophila. There are several reasons why fruit flies make useful research subjects. From the moment a fruit fly egg has been laid to the moment the adult dies is, on average, about 50 days. The adult flies can mate and lay eggs after just 10 days. This means that three generations can have been studied in a month. A year would yield 36 generations. The effects of inherited genetic problems or defects can, therefore, be analyzed within months, as can the probabilities of genetic problems being inherited by future generations. Our Magnificent Creator God has surely designed all that there is for our benefit to help us study and improve our lives in this world. God expects us to use His blessings to help ourselves and to not expect Him to do everything for us. We may need a hole in the ground but God might bless us with a shovel and wisdom to know how to dig. |
| 3/18/2023 | Even though many frogs live much of their lives out of the water, they need water to reproduce. This can be a problem since some frogs live in trees and some even live in the desert! For a tree frog, the trip from the treetops to a nearby pool is a long and dangerous journey. However, the Creator cares about all of His creatures. The leaves of the bromeliad that grows in the branches of many trees in the tropical forest form a private pool far above the ground. As a result, mama frog can raise her young without ever leaving the treetops! The desert would seem to offer an even greater challenge for a frog. However, since it pleased the Creator to place frogs in the desert – maybe to challenge the evolutionists – He has also provided for their needs. It may rain only once every two years in the deserts of central Australia. When it does rain, the water-holding frogs emerge from their underground hideaways to lay their eggs in the puddles. Before the puddles disappear, not only do the eggs hatch, but the young grow and develop into frogs that are able to store water until the next rain. As the desert again takes over, the frogs dig themselves back into the ground and go into suspended animation until the next rains come. A year or two later, the new generation will emerge after the next rain to raise their young. Neither chance nor the smartest frog in the world could design or create these abilities. Only a wise Creator could. And if our Magnificent Creator God has provided this much care for frogs, just think of how much more He cares about you and me in our everyday lives! |
| 3/17/2023 | “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Genesis 2:19 It surely wasn’t possible, we are often told, for Adam to have given names to all the millions of species of animals that exist on earth in the space of one day. Obviously, they tell us, this means that the Bible is wrong. In fact, the activity was nowhere near as arduous as this accusation suggests. The number of animals would be far less than the estimated 2 million species. Adam did not have to go looking for these animals. God brought them to him. God brought three classes of animals to Adam – livestock, birds of the heavens, and beasts of the field. All of these are vertebrates, whereas 98% of all species are invertebrates. Of the remaining 2% – or 40,000 species – many have developed from others (note: developed, not evolved) by the process of speciation. It is likely that the creatures were all descended from just a couple of thousand baramins, or created kinds. It would not be that difficult for Adam to assign a name to each of the animals that paraded before him, especially as he was created perfect, and unlikely to get tired. Suppose he took five seconds to name an animal. He could have named 2,000 animals in 2¾ hours. You might think such a task would be boring, but it was not onerous and would easily fit with all the other activities occurring on that sixth day of God’s creation, including our Magnificent Creator God making the land animals and making Eve from Adam! |
| 3/16/2023 | The Willow Warbler is a fascinating little bird. It weighs less than half an ounce and measures about four inches from its beak to the tip of its tail. It likes open woodland with small trees and is particularly happy in areas managed by humans, such as coppices and young plantations. An attractive little bird, it is greenish-brown from above, with a yellowish underside. Willow Warblers are part of the Leaf Warbler, or Phylloscopus baramin (or created kind). There are 77 species in this baramin, but we are interested here in the species Phylloscopus trochilu, especially the subspecies Phylloscopus trochilus yakutensi. This remarkable little bird has the most incredible migratory behavior, traveling about 7,500 miles. Between April and August, the birds live and breed in eastern Siberia. But as the breeding season ends, the birds begin their long, exhausting flight to sub Saharan Africa, where they will spend the winter, from October through March. Then they begin the 7,500-mile journey back to Siberia. That’s 15,000 miles per year! The reason why these warblers migrate seems clear. They do not like the extremes of temperatures in either of their homes. But a more interesting question is: How do they know where to migrate? Scientists have speculated that migratory birds are able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. But those scientists who believe in evolution have to explain how the birds used trial and error to find their routes. A more logical explanation is that our Magnificent Creator God designed them to achieve this remarkable feat. |
| 3/15/2023 | The Bible teaches that until several centuries after the Flood all people on Earth spoke the same language. The fact that many supposedly unrelated languages have similar sounding words with the same or similar meanings supports this teaching. Some language researchers say that this is simply due to chance. Now some language researchers say that they have developed another line of research that supports the belief that all humans once spoke the same language. Language researchers have spent years listening to babies in many different language groups babble. Babies younger than four months make a variety of sounds as they learn to use their voice. Speaking is a highly complex activity, requiring the coordination of 70 different muscles as well as several different body parts. By seven to ten months of age babies typically begin making sounds that alternate vowels and consonants. Researchers found that there are three distinct patterns of alternating sounds that are universal among babies in English-speaking households. Then they found that these three patterns are also common among infants from a wide range of language groups around the world. Researchers comparing infants from varying language groups then identified a fourth pattern among all groups. These findings have been interpreted as independent evidence that all people once spoke one language. We accept what the Bible says by faith, not because it has been proven. But when Scripture’s truths are supported by science the Bible’s integrity is upheld before skeptics. Our Magnificent Creator God cannot be denied!!! |
| 3/14/2023 | There are between 10,000 and 15,000 species of orchids. While you surely are not familiar with all of them, it sounds strange to talk about orchid behavior. This huge variety of orchids offers a multitude of different flower shapes, colors and sizes. Each unique shape, color and size is perfectly suited to the bees, butterflies, bats, moths, flies and birds that are involved in that orchid’s pollination. Those orchids that use birds as pollinators have no scent. Instead, they offer the brightest of colors, appealing to the birds’ strongest sense. Evolutionists call this “co-evolution.” However, giving it a name doesn’t explain it. How did these orchids know that the bird’s strongest sense is sight? And how were these orchids able to perform genetic recombination on themselves so that they could develop their bright colors? No, giving something a scientific-sounding name doesn’t make naturalistic claims any more scientific. Or consider the bee orchid. It offers a flower that looks like a female bee. The purpose here is to attract male bees to a position that will load them with pollen. How can it be scientific to suggest that a plant purposely restructured itself to fool bees into pollinating it? Our Magnificent Creator God has purposely made it impossible to explain the creation without Him. He did this not simply so that we would see that He is real. His purpose is much greater. God seeks a personal relationship with you and has made that possible through the saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. It is to Christ that He would ultimately draw our attention. |
| 3/13/2023 | Often the most productive science is done when scientists, as one founder of modern science put it, “Think God’s thoughts after Him.” For example, while antibiotics have saved millions of lives, they have proven to be only a temporary solution. In addition, there are some bacterial infections that move too fast for antibiotics to be effective. Vibrio vulnificus is one such bacterium. It is typically found in oysters. The bacterium has little effect on healthy people, but those whom it infects are most likely to be dead within 24 hours. How do we combat such a fast-working deadly bacterium by thinking God’s thoughts after Him? By finding something that is even faster at infecting the bacterium and killing it. That’s exactly what medical researchers have done. They have found a virus that infects the bacteria, rapidly reproducing inside the bacterium until it causes the bacterium to burst. Once the bacteria are all dead, the virus can no longer reproduce. Researchers infected eight mice with Vibrio vulnificus. If they had not at the same time infected the mice with the virus, all would have been dead within 18 hours. As a result, five of the mice never became ill. This approach is also being successfully used to treat bacteria that causes skin infections. The successes that come from thinking God’s thoughts after Him demonstrate that our Magnificent Creator God is the Author of science and all that it studies. |
| 3/12/2023 | Did you know that dolphins have a flexible rib cage that allows them to temporarily collapse their lungs in deep water dives? This pushes the air from their lungs, so they don’t get “the bends” like human divers do, which can be fatal. The bends is a painful condition that occurs in scuba divers who ascend too quickly or in aviators flying at high altitudes. Also called decompression sickness, the bends results when bubbles from dissolved gases form in the blood or in tissues because of rapidly decreasing pressure. God knew what he was doing when he planned HIS creation, and mans’ THEORY of evolution has nothing to do with it. How could a flexible rib cage AND collapsible lung evolve together and in just the way that worked together that the animals needed them to, to make these important dives for food? It didn’t just HAPPEN! Our Magnificent Creator God made it happen! |
| 3/11/2023 | You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! Our Magnificent Creator God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
| 3/10/2023 | Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for our Magnificent Creator God’s complete attention! |
| 3/9/2023 | One of the most beautiful and famous passages in the Bible, concerning unborn children, is found in Psalm 139. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16) God formed the “inward parts” or internal organs. He formed the “covering” or skin. And He formed the “frame” – the bones. None of these developments was hidden from God. They were all put together by Him for His glory. These verses tell us that the days were already formed for him before the baby had seen any of them. Therefore, this Scripture is telling us that the baby inside his mother’s womb is human. We are talking about the baby being human because of the way he was put together. Psalm 139 has expressed that same thought in a song of worship. We worship our Magnificent Creator God for the physical life He has given us and for the spiritual life that He has created. Evidence today suggests that the unborn babies react to external stimuli such as light and sound; further confirmation of their unique life apart from the mother. |
| 3/8/2023 | How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements made by our Magnificent Creator God that we find in the plant and animal kingdoms. |
| 3/7/2023 | The first four words of the Bible are incredibly important. “In the beginning, God…” These words boldly declare the truth about how we should view the universe we live in. They tell us that there was a beginning. There was a time when all the things that now are were not. And before all that, before even time itself, was God. The four words refute all naturalistic explanations of the universe. They refute evolution because they make clear that there was a planning intelligence behind the universe rather than blind, random chance. Yet the words also refute a mere theistic intelligent design model because they reveal that the Creator was not an impersonal, unknowable entity but has all the divine attributes on which the remainder of the 66 books of the Bible will expand. These four powerful words suggest that we should go on to learn more about this wonderful God, Who has made all things well, and Who takes the trouble to be mindful even of humans like us. These four powerful words refute atheism by boldly declaring that God does indeed exist. As the title of one of Francis Schaeffer’s books puts it, “He is there, and He is not silent”. The four words also refute agnosticism because the God Who Is There is someone that we can know and learn more about. The four words also refute deism because the God who is declared to have created is described, known, and knowable. He is not an abstract concept, but a reality. Genesis is the foundational book of the Bible. And these four powerful words are the foundation phrase of Genesis. It is to our Magnificent Creator God that we owe all things! |
| 3/6/2023 | While the Bible teaches us that sex is a wonderful gift of God, evolutionists believe that sexual reproduction should not have evolved. According to evolutionists, if sexual reproduction were to develop, evolution is supposed to get rid of it. To make matters worse, immobile plants use sexual reproduction. This creates a problem in transferring the male genes to the female for fertilization. Just to confound things even more, God uses insects and even mammals to transfer the pollen. Since evolutionists believe that plants were around for many millions of years before animals, evolutionists have yet another problem. The European family of the Arum lilies attracts beetles and flies. When one of the insects lands on a flower, he finds a slick, oil-coated surface and ends up sliding down into a chamber filled with small hairs. Imprisoned, he finds a sweet sap that makes good eating. While he is gorging himself on the sap and getting sticky in the process, the male part of the flower showers him with pollen. The next day, the sticky, pollen-coated insect finds that the doors to his prison are open. So he flies off to another flower to unwittingly deliver his load of pollen! It sounds like science fiction to say that a flower figured out how to do this. And it certainly doesn’t sound very scientific to say that nobody designed and made this complex arrangement. As we learn more about these arrangements in nature, it becomes even more clear that an all-wise Magnificent Creator God designed these beautiful, symbiotic relationships between different members of the living kingdom. |
| 3/5/2023 | The yellow-and-black striped archer fish shops among the insects that land on branches overhanging his pond in the peaceful waters of the East Indies. Sometimes he will wait under a branch until something that would make a good lunch lands on it. When the archer fish finds a tasty-looking insect, he shoots an accurately aimed stream of water at his prey, knocking the insect into the water. Before the insect has a chance to recover, the archer fish has eaten him and is looking for dessert. The archer fish has a deep groove in his mouth. When he places his tongue against this groove, he ends up with a blow tube that is about 1/16-inch in diameter. Compressing his gills forces pressurized water through the blow pipe. The rounded tip of the archer fish’s tongue acts as a valve so the fish can shoot a few small bursts or one long stream of water at his prey. The archer fish seldom misses if his prey is within four feet. This simple but elegant arrangement is testimony to a wise and skillful Creator. Neither mindless chance evolution nor any fish could be smart enough to design this system. Nor could any fish redesign his normal mouth tissues into this unique tool. Here we see that our Magnificent Creator God even cares about providing the needs of a fish! We know that He cares even more about our lives! In fact, He has said so! |
| 3/4/2023 | “And the LORD God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It’s behind your refrigerator and under your bed. It’s part of the air you breathe. While dust is common, it’s not commonplace at all. Much of the dust in our everyday lives is nothing more than tiny particles of skin, clothing, carpeting – just pieces of everyday life floating in the air. Studies of dust particles reveal that most dust is soil. However, a second common dust – even a thousand miles from the sea – is salt, driven into the wind by the waves. This salt helps form the clouds that bring us rain. The next most common forms of natural dust are volcanic eruptions and forest fires. Transatlantic winds pick up the dust of the Sahara and sweep it across the ocean where enough of it lands in Miami to sometimes give the rain a light pink color. Not only does your home have dust from all over the world, there’s probably also some from outer space. Ten thousand tons of disintegrating meteorites and comets rain down on the Earth every year. You can even identify some of this dust by running a magnet through the dust in a rain gutter. Most of the magnetic particles that stick to the magnet are probably from space. In addition, some dust is alive, made up of pollen, fungus spores and even dormant bacteria, hoping to land on a good place to grow. Dust reminds us that the world is smaller than we think and that it won’t last forever. Are you ready for the next world? All your preparations have been made by Jesus Christ. Find out in the Bible what our Magnificent Creator God has done for you today. |
| 3/3/2023 | Green plants are green, mostly because of a green pigment called chlorophyll. Many of us learned in high school that this green pigment is what causes photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is that key process by which a plant can manufacture useful high energy molecules such as sugars. In the photosynthetic process, the plant absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water transpiring from its roots to create sugar molecules. The byproduct, oxygen, is released into the atmosphere. At first sight, this seems pretty straightforward. But there is, of course, a lot more to it. The process becomes especially difficult to understand if one wants to assume that this is a process which came into existence by evolution. Our first problem is that the reaction requires an input of energy – chemists call this an endothermic reaction. Such reactions are not unusual, though reactions requiring the input of light energy are less common than those inputting heat energy. However, if you fill a jar with water and carbon dioxide, and shine a light into it, you will not make sugar molecules. Therefore, chlorophyll is not just a catalyst for the reaction – it is an essential intermediary without which the reaction cannot happen. In fact, a whole book can be written on the complexity of this whole process, and the inter-dependability of every step. And then we go further to see how animals get their energy from plants, so every energy chain comes back to photosynthesis. It is a process that looks like it was designed by God for a purpose – which is exactly what the Bible says our Magnificent Creator God did!!! |
| 3/2/2023 | It was first discovered in 1855, but many scientists debated its existence for another 50 years. Once its existence was finally proven to everyone’s satisfaction, it was another 50 years before science had any tools to begin studying it. Finally, in the late 1980s, scientists began to learn a little about the secrets of one of the tiniest, yet most amazing structures in the body. At the back of the eye, between the deepest layer of the retina and the cells beneath it, lies a tiny moat made up of about 10 drops of a mysterious fluid. The entire moat is thinner than a sheet of cellophane. It seems that the clear fluid in the moat serves the surrounding light-sensing tissues of the eye in place of blood, bringing in nutrients and carrying away waste. It also transports light-sensitive chemicals needed by the light-detecting cells in the eye. In addition, it seems to glue the retina in place. More than that, the moat is rich in a growth factor. This fact makes scientists believe that the gel may also be important to repairing injuries to the retina, keeping the cells of the retina young and active, as well as helping in the growth of new cells. As one researcher said, the more they study this tiny structure, the more unexpected abilities they find – something like a bottomless suitcase. Charles Darwin, who didn’t even know about the moat, was right when he said that it was impossible to believe that natural selection could have produced the eye. We should always give our Magnificent Creator God credit when credit is due!!! |
| 3/1/2023 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of our Magnificent Creator God and not mindless, natural accidents. |
| 2/28/2023 | Consider the most amazing part of your body we call the heart and how marvelous it is, something unduplicated by science and technology. Your heart is a muscle about the size of your fist. When you were born, your heart weighed less than one ounce, and if you are an adult male your heart weighs about 11 ounces; 9 ounces if you are a female. That means your life is dependent upon a muscle that weighs less than a pound, or 400 grams. It’s the most critical part of your body, too, one which works day and night, never takes vacations, seldom gets rest, and never goes to sleep. There are four chambers in your heart with valves between them, and these cooperate in pumping blood through a vast network of veins, arteries, and capillaries, bringing oxygen and nourishment to your body. To a far greater degree than we acknowledge or even ponder, we are dependent on this muscle’s silent performance, because if it quits, you do, as well – and very quickly, too. You can get along quite well with just one eye, or still function with the loss of hearing in one ear. Though it’s sad, you can survive with the loss of an arm or leg. But when your heart becomes diseased, unless surgery can correct the situation, you are in grave trouble. Based on a heartbeat of 70 times a minute, your heart beats 4200 times an hour, 100,800 times every 24 hours, and over 36 million times a year. By the time you reach 70 years of age, your heart has beaten over 2.5 trillion times. Connected to your heart is a vast network of veins and arteries–a kind of built-in transportation system for your blood–which, if connected end to end, would stretch between 60,000 and 100,000 miles, or reach up to four times around the world at the equator. The volume of blood pumped by your heart in a year is about 650,000 gallons or 2,460,250 liters. That’s enough to fill more than 81 standard railroad tank cars. Your beating heart generates enough energy in a twelve-hour period to lift one of those tank cars weighing 65 tons, a foot off the ground. Some 3000 years ago the Psalmist said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalms 139:14). And that was long before the days of Dr. Christiaan Barnard of South Africa, who performed the first heart transplant, or before Dr. Tom Fogarty invented the little plastic balloon which smoothes out clogged arteries or doctors knew how to insert little stainless-steel stents which pop against weakened arteries and keep them open, thus ensuring the flow of blood to your heart. Your heart is an awesome marvel which is the key to keeping you alive and healthy. When you take care of it, it takes good care of you, but when you abuse it and fail to nourish it, like anything mechanical it will wear out. We can thank our Magnificent Creator God for this tiny muscle that works powerfully and tirelessly to keep us alive!!! |
| 2/27/2023 | For many, the existence of so much ice on Antarctica is a grave cause for concern, as they have been told that climate change will cause a lot of this ice to melt and cause the sea level to rise. The worry is that many of the world’s great cities, and many small island nations, could disappear as the Antarctic melts. So why did God make such a troublesome continent which could precipitate the end of the world? Remember that the topography of the world is not the way it was originally created. We have explained previously that there was likely just one main pre-Flood continent, which we call Rodinia. This continent split up during the Flood. The massive deposits of fossil fuels known to exist on the southernmost continent are evidence of pre-Flood forests, probably populated with animals. Every time ice breaks off from an Antarctic glacier, the media worry about flooding – yet God has promised not to flood the world again, nor to bring seasons to an end. Despite seeming to be a homogeneous repository for the 70% of the Earth’s fresh water, locked in as ice, there are considerable variations in climate between different parts of the continent. For every place where ice is melting and breaking up, there are parts where the ice cap gets thicker. Our Magnificent Creator God has all this in balance for His own purposes, and we can be sure He will keep all His promises!!! |
| 2/26/2023 | Humpbacks are among the largest whales in the world. A typical humpback weighs about 40 tons and begins its breach deep down in the ocean. Imagine the acceleration required to get this enormous animal out of the water and into the air. The whale leaves the water at an angle of 30° and a speed of 18 mph. Clearly, this monster uses a lot of energy in breaching, yet it is not unknown for the whale to repeat the exercise – the observed record being 130 leaps in 90 minutes! Why does it go to all this trouble? No one really knows. As with all such obscure phenomena, there are those who suggest that the whales are trying to “attract the girls”! Others suggest that the big splash achieved on re-entry rips some of the barnacles off the whale’s surface. There may be truth in either of these suggestions. But Wilson says that he cannot overlook the probability that the whale breaches simply because it gives God pleasure! He is a Magnificent Creator God, and the world He made is not for utility only, but also for beauty!!! |
| 2/25/2023 | There are a number of blurry, indistinct, cloudy-looking objects in the night sky which are not pinpoints of light as the stars are. One hundred ten of these are the so-called Messier objects, which were cataloged by one Charles Messier – a French astronomer who lived from 1730 through 1817. These are a mixture of objects. Some of them we would now call nebulae – quite literally, nebulous clouds of interstellar dust and gas. Examples of these are M8 – the Lagoon Nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius, and M42 – the famous Orion Nebula. Others are star clusters, such as The Pleiades, in Taurus – an object mentioned in the Bible, which is cataloged as M45. Still others are actually other galaxies, such as M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, or M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Why did Messier catalog such a wide variety of different objects without commenting on their differentiation? The answer is that he wasn’t actually interested in those objects. He cataloged them, rather, as a police officer catalogs data from a possible suspect in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. Messier was interested in comets – which also, from a distance, look like blurry objects. The difference is that comets, being Solar System objects, move from night to night, whereas his cataloged objects appear fixed relative to the stars. The Hebrew word for star includes what we call stars today and other objects, such as Messier’s objects. All were made by our Magnificent Creator God and declare His glory!!! |
| 2/24/2023 | Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wrote about red snow. Today, red, orange and even green snow has been found on every continent. It is typically found in deep mountain snows in the late spring. The snow color is caused by any of 350 species of strange snow algae. The pigments inside the resting algae cysts produce the colors. Even while resting in the nutrient-poor, highly acidic snow the cysts are photosynthesizing. In its cyst form the algae can live even in temperatures of -94°F. As the snow melts in the late mountain spring, the cysts burst open. A single cell with two whip-like tails emerges. It then begins to swim upward, against the draining water from the snow above. At this time of the year, the snow melt water can reach the same acidity as a peat bog, which causes death to most microbes. Those that manage to swim through the snow mate and then return to the cyst stage. These cysts then settle to the ground as the snow melts to remain inactive until the next spring. Researchers have found that the algae have unique fatty acids that enable them to remain flexible in the cold environment in which they spend their entire active lives. Snow algae have been uniquely designed by our Magnificent Creator God to make a living in some of the lowest temperatures on Earth. If our Creator can find a way to enable snow algae to flourish in these conditions, He can find a way to help us out of the most impossible circumstances!!! |
| 2/23/2023 | What did God have in mind when He created the human male? The world around us offers many images of what it means to be a “real man.” The world offers us the breadwinner, the tough-guy and the workaholic’s unending push for success. Also, it’s becoming increasingly universal that it is the woman who holds the family together. We can be sure that none of these images capture what God had in mind. If we want to learn some practical lessons about what God intended a man to be, we need to begin with God’s original creation of the first man. The first job given to Adam, the first man, was an intellectual task – identifying and naming the animals. Jesus Christ taught us to call God “our Father.” However, we shouldn’t make the mistake of comparing Him to our imperfect human fathers. Human fathers need to learn from God. What kind of father is He? He’s tough. However, toughness does not mean hurling thunderbolts. True toughness is best shown when love persists despite rejection and disobedience. God never tired of patiently seeking Saul of Tarsus, His sworn enemy. However, while He is loving, God is not a wimp. He has established absolutes that we can depend on. He always keeps His Word. We can be thankful for that because when we look at ourselves we know that we have not been the men or women He intended us to be. His Word of grace in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ assures all who cling to Christ that the perfect and almighty Magnificent Creator God is truly our Father! |
| 2/22/2023 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109°23´ and an acute angle of 70°23´. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Creator. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder our Magnificent Creator God has given them so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness! |
| 2/21/2023 | Deserts are inhospitable places with little rain—blazingly hot by day and chillingly cold by night. Few plants can survive, but the rock morning glory can. It has large underground tubers resembling sweet potatoes that store water whenever it rains. In times of drought, it’s sustained by the water stored in its twenty or so underground reserves. Jeremiah 17:8 says of those who put their confidence in our Magnificent Creator God: “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”. |
| 2/20/2023 | All cats seem to consume a very high fat meat diet. Unlike other carnivores, cats cannot manufacture their own taurine, so their diet is almost perfectly carnivorous, with very little in the way of plant material. There are many cases where cats of similar size can hybridize. Tigons and ligers are well-known hybrids. They are both hybrids of tigers and lions. Ligers have a lion father and a tiger mother, while tigons are the other way around. Other inter-feline hybrids are possible, such as the blynx – a hybrid of lynx and bobcat. This seems to indicate that all cats are part of the same baramin (created kind). The Ark would not, therefore, have housed two lions, two tigers, two pumas, etc. There would have been two cats. These would have been something like the saber-toothed cats – possibly a smilodon. All the modern species of cat would have developed from these. This, of course, is not evolution, which requires new genetic information to be made, whereas the speciation of cats involves variation of genetic information already existing. Our Magnificent Creator God made cats. They are such a clearly defined group that it is as if God were making a textbook in the animal kingdom to explain how animals got to be as they are! |
| 2/19/2023 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 2/18/2023 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by their Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error!!! This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty! |
| 2/17/2023 | We have all looked in wonder at the amazing transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. However, did you realize that a moth needs an entirely different kind of brain than a caterpillar? We can truly say that here we have an insect with two brains! In the caterpillar stage, the moth lumbers around in a body that is primarily designed for eating. Its brain must be able to command powerful jaws and a comparatively huge digestive system as well as the complexities of caterpillar locomotion. The world of the caterpillar is very different from the world of the moth. During metamorphosis the caterpillar completely dissolves and the moth is rebuilt from the liquid. The brain, for example, requires new nerve cells and new connections between brain cells, while some brain cells change function, migrate to new locations, or even die. The result is a brain that is 10 times the size of the caterpillar’s and ready to control flight. The moth’s primary purpose in life is to reproduce. So its new brain is able to generate the odors used by moths to identify and communicate with potential mates. It is also equipped to detect the scents of a potential mate. Only our Magnificent Creator God could completely rebuild a caterpillar into a moth. Only He could rebuild and increase its brain ten-fold in only a week or two. Even more amazing is how He remakes people. Through the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ turns us from people who wish to escape Him to new creatures who love Him and find joy in Him. |
| 2/16/2023 | For many people studying the early chapters of Genesis, the account of Babel is a troubling interlude. We like to concentrate on the Creation Week, and then the Flood, and then let’s get on to talking about Abraham. But before we get to Abraham, we have this troubling account of what all these people who were the descendants of Noah and his family were doing at Babel. God had given a very clear and brief command to Noah and his family before making a covenant with them. He said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). It is in that context that we need to consider the words of the people at Babel. “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4) It is not that there is necessarily anything wrong with building a city. But there were a number of things wrong with their plans for this city. The city was to be designed to prevent themselves from being dispersed over the face of the whole earth. This was clearly in direct contradiction to God’s command to them. In view of this rebellious attitude, we also see that there was something wrong with their desire to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens”. An attempt to get to heaven by our own effort, without reference to our Magnificent Creator God, is clearly an act of rebellion and led to the disaster which God brought on them. |
| 2/15/2023 | The Apostle Peter reminds us in 2 Peter 1:20 that “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.” In this context, prophecy refers to God’s words told forth by those who wrote Scripture. In that sense, all of the Bible is prophetic because it is all God’s word, breathed out by Him. This general principle, which applies to the whole Bible, clearly applies to Genesis, which is the focus of most of our studies in this ministry. So, when we read in the early chapters of Genesis how God made the world and how He destroyed that first world in a worldwide Flood, we must recognize that the interpretation of these verses is not to be a private matter. Yet, interpreting Genesis has indeed become a private matter for many Christians who refuse to believe that God’s word means what it says at this point. So, Genesis tells us that God made the world in six literal 24-hour days. But we don’t like that because our scientific textbooks tell us that the universe is billions of years old. So we impose the billion years on Genesis in a private interpretation. Genesis tells us that God made plants and animals directly. He made plants two days before the flying insects that can pollinate them. But our high-school textbooks tell us that animals evolved from simpler organisms, so we interpret the Creation Week in a figurative sense – another private interpretation. It is time for Christians to get back to believing that our Magnificent Creator God meant what He said!!! |
| 2/14/2023 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures. |
| 2/13/2023 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm! |
| 2/12/2023 | We want to avoid getting bacteria in our food, don’t we? Bacteria cause illness. Bacteria are bad. Yet, some of the world’s healthiest foods contain deliberately introduced bacteria. One such strain of bacteria is the Lactic Acid Bacterium (LAB). This is used in foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut. Brassicas, such as cabbage, often have low quantities of this bacterium. When sealed in a suitable fermentation jar with salt, the LAB can thrive. LAB is able to withstand high acidity and salinity, so it grows, even in a salty environment. One of the products of LAB’s metabolism is lactic acid. Most other bacteria cannot survive in either acid or salt, so the LAB begins to dominate, while the vast majority of other bacteria die. LAB itself is not harmful to humans, so, paradoxically, the good bacteria have effectively killed off all the bad bacteria, providing a healthy, long-lasting food. When God finished making the world at the end of day six of creation, He looked at all that He had made and declared it to be very good. This must have included bacteria. Since Adam’s sin, many bacteria have mutated (though not evolved, as they have not gained new genetic information) into harmful organisms. Perhaps originally, all bacteria were created to be as useful as LAB in that original perfect world that our Magnificent Creator God gave us and that we so sinfully polluted. |
| 2/11/2023 | “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” One of the most common arguments against a literal six-day creation is that the structure of the days is a literary device, called the Framework Hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests an almost poetic pattern to the days, which they claim demonstrates that the days are not meant to be taken literally. On day one, God made the universe. On day two, He made the seas and atmosphere, and on day three He made the land, with its plants. Then on day four, He filled the universe, day five filled the sea and atmosphere, and day six filled the land. So there are three days of creating ex nihilo and three days of filling those creations. Again, the advocates of this hypothesis maintain that this pattern shows that Genesis 1 is allegorical literature, proclaiming the truth of God as Creator, but does not give a historical account. A quick answer to this point is that if there is a real pattern of two sets of three days, this does not prove that the days are not literal. God is a God of order. However, their neat pattern breaks down. Day one is not actually the parallel to day four – day two is. How so? On day two, God created the firmament, and the firmament refers not merely to the atmosphere but the entirety of space. A better suggestion is to take our Magnificent Creator God at His word, that He created everything exactly how He said He did!!! |
| 2/10/2023 | Some frogs are regular little drug factories. Their skins produce a wide range of powerful alkaloids, are a large family of chemicals usually produced by plants. Familiar alkaloids include quinine, caffeine and morphine. Different alkaloids have different effects, usually on the nervous system. The poison-arrow frog may be the most famous alkaloid-producing frog. South American natives simply rub their arrows or darts on the frog’s back. One species of this frog contains enough poison to kill about a 100 people! Another frog, native to Ecuador, produces an anesthetic more powerful than morphine. South American natives rub another frog on their wounds. Researchers discovered that the frog’s skin makes a powerful antiseptic. Yet another frog alkaloid will change the colors on parrot feathers. Some of the alkaloids produced by frogs are so complex that it takes years of study, using modern science’s most sophisticated equipment, to discover the active chemical. Researchers in this field are only beginning to learn about the alkaloids produced by frogs. They have yet to research a frog that natives claim to use to heighten their senses for the hunt. What puzzles scientists who believe in evolution is that the frogs’ exotic skin chemistries don’t follow the patterns they anticipated based upon expected evolutionary relationships. This means that these frogs have one more exciting purpose. They provide evidence against evolution and for a Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 2/9/2023 | Love is one of the necessities of life that is both physical and spiritual. While it doesn’t fit with a strictly materialistic view of life, love and touch, or lack of love and touch, can determine our health and sometimes even life and death. The claim that love and touch are necessary to life and health was considered so outrageous that it wasn’t until relatively recently that scientists began to test such claims. Researchers selected 40 hospitalized infants. These infants were not in intensive care, on oxygen, or intravenous feedings, but they were too tiny to leave the hospital. Researchers randomly selected half the group for attention. These infants were touched for three 15-minute periods a day. The first five minutes were spent stroking the infants’ bodies. The next five minutes were spend lightly moving the infants’ arms and legs. This was followed by five more minutes of stroking. Even though the infants often didn’t seem to notice the attention, it made a difference. After only 10 weekdays of this attention, the stroked infants had gained 47% more weight than the infants that were ignored. This is especially amazing considering the infants that gained less weight had been fed the same number of calories. The stroked infants were also more active, so they should have actually metabolized more of the calories and lost weight rather than increasing in weight. Can we literally live on love? Well, we do need food and other things, but we also need love—especially from our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 2/8/2023 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was the Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language by our Magnificent Creator God to praise our God and Savior and to tell others who He is and what He has done!!! |
| 2/7/2023 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! Our Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health. |
| 2/6/2023 | Not every spider can kill you if it bites you! But we never really warm up to the eight-legged monsters. It’s the sheer legginess of spiders that repels most of us. And jumping spiders are the worst. A recent science news article about a particular jumping spider called toxeus magna states that the mother spiders are actually good mothers and carefully look after their babies. This particular species was discovered in a park in Singapore. When scientist Zanqi Chen found the species, he found a female surrounded by babies. Yet, other jumping spiders are loners and sometimes even eat their young. This one was nursing them. Chen’s surprise deepened when he studied them in the lab. The mother spider was observed to be leaving droplets of white secretion around the nest, and the babies drank it up. Sometimes, babies clung to their mother and appeared to be suckling. Closer analysis showed that the baby spiders could not survive without this liquid, which, for a period, provided their only sustenance. Despite not being a mammal, these spiders appear to suckle their young on what is, for all intents and purposes, a liquid acting like milk. Our Magnificent Creator God has made some remarkable creatures and it never ceases to be amazing how many such marvels He has created. |
| 2/5/2023 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by our Magnificent Creator God allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following the Lord’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own. |
| 2/4/2023 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, our Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible! |
| 2/3/2023 | Whalebone was used for all sorts of ornaments and structural purposes as a gently bendable, yet firm material. Today it has been replaced by plastics. But it wasn’t really bone. It came from the mouth of the whale. The structure is known today as baleen, and it is made of keratin, like your fingernails. The whale swallows huge quantities of water, then spits it out, sieving it through the baleen to catch the small krill organisms on which the baleen whale thrives. Evolutionists have to believe that this baleen evolved, as they believe that the ancestors of the whale had teeth – as do non-baleen whales today. A recent article on one popular-style science website stated that “rivaling the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, one of the most extraordinary transformations in the history of life was the evolution of baleen.” The comparison is appropriate. We have remarked many times on the sheer impossibility of the evolution of feathers, and so it is with the evolution of baleen. The difficulty for evolutionists is working out a possible mechanism for the imaginary intermediate forms. Would the intermediate have had both teeth and baleen, or would there have had to be creatures with neither teeth nor baleen? If the latter, would those animals not have starved to death? As is usual, it makes more sense to suppose that our Magnificent Creator God designed baleen whales exactly as they needed to be so that they can live successfully in the oceans!!! |
| 2/2/2023 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Magnificent Creator God. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Put your brain together with the Word of God today! |
| 2/1/2023 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures designed themselves but were indeed a work of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/31/2023 | Sometimes a headline screams to be noticed even before we have read the article concerned. One such headline declared: “Prehistoric cave art suggests ancient use of complex astronomy.” There are so many presuppositions in that headline. The first is the use of the word prehistoric. The word historic refers to the timescale of human beings, so prehistoric implies something from before there were human beings on the Earth. However, the Bible does not allow for any prehistory – well, except perhaps 5 days. What the headline is getting at is that the art it is about to describe was supposedly done by creatures that were not fully evolved into human beings. Secondly, the headline refers to “complex astronomy”. The astronomy concerned should have been too complex for these primitive cave men. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, examining yet again the cave drawings at Lascaux, France, determined that these early people understood the precession of the Earth’s orbit, and an ancient comet strike. We have discussed before that the reason these people were living in caves is not because they were primitive, but because they had only just arrived at the area, having migrated after the Tower of Babel incident. The drawings show how highly civilized they were, and their knowledge of complex astronomy confirms this. These astounding examples of cave art and science are fully understandable within a biblical worldview, whereas those using an evolutionary worldview are constantly taken by surprise. We must constantly remind ourselves that it was by the hand of our Magnificent Creator God that all things came to be!!! |
| 1/30/2023 | The red panda has to be one of the world’s most attractive animals, with a cute white face and a ginger red body. As its name suggests, it was once thought to be closely related to the giant panda, with whom it shares a number of traits, including a diet of bamboo. However, the giant panda has been placed in the same family as bears, while the red panda was thought to have been part of raccoon family. Even evolutionists now think the relationship between giant pandas and red pandas is remote, and the red panda has now been placed in a family all of its own, with no other extant species – called ailuridae. Creationists treat ailuridae as a baramin, and it causes us no problem to accept that this baramin is a single stick in the creationist orchard of life – a baramin containing only one species. Red pandas are supposed to be a good proof of evolution. Evolutionists like to class them as meat eaters because of their teeth and claws. However, their diet consists almost entirely of bamboo. If this is supposed to be the result of the upward march of evolutionary natural selection, then it seems to be an unusual route. Their bodies cannot digest bamboo well, so they have to eat a great deal of it in order to get the nutrients that they need. The uniqueness of the red panda is, however, the sort of thing we would expect in a creation made by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/29/2023 | For centuries, Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created by our Magnificent Creator God was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that He had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. |
| 1/28/2023 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator God. |
| 1/27/2023 | As far as we know, the blue whale is the largest animal that has ever existed. Every statistic that we find about these giants is overwhelming. A blue whale’s tongue is larger than an elephant. Its flipper can be about six feet long – as long as a man is tall. A baby blue whale is the size of two minivans. Their mouths could hold 400 people. Yet the creatures they eat – krill – are only about half an inch long. They swallow vast amounts of water, then filter it back through their baleen – the strange keratin filter-like structure that they have in their mouths. They eat four tons of krill a day. That is 4 million of the tiny creatures. Babies consume 50 to 100 gallons of milk per day. The blue whale’s tail is as wide as a soccer net. One of these whales can dive to nearly 1,000 feet, and they can stay there for 30 minutes, without needing a breath. The water that they blow through their blowhole can jet up to 30 feet high. In short, these are magnificent animals, clearly illustrating the greatness and the beauty of God’s creation. We read in Genesis 1:21 that God made them on the fifth day of creation: “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly.” The word translated as whales could also refer to other large sea creatures, but it certainly includes these beautiful, amazing giants of the ocean. The blue whale is but one tiny detail our Magnificent Creator God saw fit to be in His Master Design! |
| 1/26/2023 | Jesus talked about “the sign of Jonah” when He was being asked about signs. He said it was the only sign that would be given to that generation. He then proceeded to tell them what the sign meant. It refers to the fact that Jonah was inside the big fish for three days and three nights. Jesus related this to Himself by stating that, in the same way, the Son of Man (that is, Jesus) would be in the ground for three days and three nights and then would rise again. By referring this matter to Himself, Jesus was also validating the truthfulness of the account of Jonah and the big fish in Jonah chapter 1. Yet many people prefer to think of the account of Jonah and the big fish as a fairy tale. The Bible has many other examples of God using animals to do His will on different occasions. For example, He made Balaam’s donkey speak in order to get Balaam’s attention and to tell him exactly what he was to say. And He used various animal examples to Job in order to explain how Job had not grasped the purpose of God’s creation. Jonah was taken by the creature to Ninevah – a gentile town, which repented for that time. It is fitting that Jonah was used as a type of the death and resurrection of Christ because it is by Christ’s death and resurrection that all peoples of the world are able to be reconciled to our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 1/25/2023 | Most people are familiar with the story of Jonah and the whale. However, by calling it a story, some people want to cast doubt upon the key event of the account. Jonah, having run away and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish – probably the same as modern Spain – eventually ends up in the sea, and God sends a whale to swallow him and take him to Ninevah. People throw up all kinds of problems here. How could a large sea creature have swallowed Jonah? Would it not have chewed him first? Would there have been enough room in the creature’s stomach? How did Jonah escape being eaten away by the animal’s digestive juices? And surely there aren’t any large whales of suitable size to be found in the Mediterranean Sea! But I have to throw one big problem back at the naysayers. In Matthew 12:40, Jesus confirms that Jonah was indeed inside the whale for three days and three nights, and then Jesus uses the event to apply to His own death and resurrection to come. The Hebrew word tannin can be translated as large sea creature, as can the Greek word ketos in the Septuagint and New Testament. Therefore, it could apply to a whale, shark or any other large sea creature. The type of creature is not as important as accepting that this event is accurate history because it is in the Bible and its authenticity is underlined by our Magnificent Creator God Himself, Jesus Christ! |
| 1/24/2023 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen, the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. Our Magnificent Creator God has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. |
| 1/23/2023 | The conventional understanding has always been that North America was populated by people who crossed from Asia to Alaska via the Bering Strait and then migrated down the West Coast. Eventually, some of them crossed as far as the eastern coasts of North and South America. Known as the Clovis culture, their descendants produced all the North and South American Indian tribes and nations. The Clovis sites that have been excavated so far have produced distinctive spear points that have become known as Clovis points. That understanding has now been challenged by finds in Virginia. Signs of human habitation have been found at Cactus Hill, which is 45 miles south of Richmond. Researchers have dated the site to be fifty percent older than any known Clovis excavation. Stone points and blades have been found at Cactus Hill which show wear marks typical of hide scraping and butchering. The points and blades are unlike any known Clovis points. However, they do resemble western European blades and points from the same period. These facts have led some researchers to conclude that the site is evidence that ancient Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to begin a settlement in North America. This was long, long before the time of the Vikings or Columbus. When God made Adam and Eve, and again, after the Genesis Flood, God commanded human beings to “fill the earth.” More and more we find evidences that early man obeyed this commandment from our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 1/22/2023 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workmanship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation. |
| 1/21/2023 | Roman Vishniac is a renowned photographer of microscopic scenes. One of his favorite subjects is one of the so-called simplest forms of life. This “simple” life, the protozoan, is supposedly the ancestor of all living things. However, Vishniac has noted that the protozoan is neither simple nor archaic in character. This creature carries out all the functions of life that we require millions of cells to sustain—all within a single cell. There is a parallel in technology. The first adding machines were large and heavy contraptions. As these mechanical adding machines became smaller, they had to be more cleverly designed because they were smaller. The first electronic calculators were even smaller and lighter than their mechanical brothers. But they were still much larger and simpler than calculators today. As calculators have decreased in size, they have had to be more cleverly designed because they are smaller. Vishniac has learned that the so-called “simple” one-celled creatures are not simple at all. This is because they must carry out the business of life within the limits of their small size. This has not swayed him from evolution. However, this fact has convinced him that current theories are wrong. You see, evolution is in trouble if there are no “simple” forms of life. We believe that this clear evidence that there are no simple forms of life—evidence powerful enough to sway the experts—supports the Bible’s claim that all forms of life were created in finished form by a wise Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/20/2023 | The Aye-Aye is one of the strangest little monkeys on earth. Its peculiar features bear witness that it was specially designed and created to fill a unique niche in nature, not a chance development of evolution. The Aye-Aye lives in Madagascar. This small creature has huge ears and an extra long middle finger. It crawls on trees, tapping on them to find grubs. The Aye-Aye’s ears are so sensitive that it can tell if there is a grub hole hidden beneath the surface of the wood. Not only can the Aye-Aye sense a grub hole an inch within the wood, it can even tell if there is a grub in the hole. When the Aye-Aye senses a grub, it chews into the wood with forward curving, incisor teeth. However, the Aye-Aye doesn’t have to worry about wearing its teeth down chewing on the tough wood. Its special incisor teeth are unique among primates. They continue to grow throughout the Aye-Aye’s life, just like a rodent’s teeth. Once down to the grub, it uses its elongated middle finger to fish the grub out for lunch. Researchers have noted that the Aye-Aye fills the same niche as the woodpecker in an environment where there are no woodpeckers. The Aye-Aye has clearly been specially designed with unique features so that it can make its living in a niche that is unfilled in its own environment. Our Magnificent Creator God not only made the earth to be inhabited, He designed His creatures to make a living within it!!! |
| 1/19/2023 | Dinosaur fossil hunters and paleontologists have long debated whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded. With reptile characteristics, it was expected that dinosaurs would be cold-blooded. Yet, some evidence indicated that they must have been warm-blooded. The problem is that their soft organs are almost never fossilized. The words “almost never” are important. A dinosaur liver and diaphragm – the soft parts – were recently found fossilized. Fossilization of soft organs is a testimony to the rapidity with which the dinosaurs were encased in the mud that later hardened to rock. Now a fossilized dinosaur heart has been discovered in South Dakota within the chest cavity of a fossilized Thescelosaurus. Once researchers recognized that the stone within the chest cavity might be a heart, they x-rayed it. X-rays revealed a four-chambered heart with one aorta. Reptiles have two aortas. In other words, Thescelosaurus had a heart constructed like the hearts of warm-blooded animals. This kind of heart is more efficient in delivering oxygen to the body. This in turn supports a more active lifestyle and higher metabolic rates. Based on the structure of Thescelosaurus’s heart, many scientists have concluded that it was indeed warm-blooded. The same Magnificent Creator God who made the dinosaur’s heart is able to heal our hearts when they are broken by sorrow. It is He Who heals our broken hearts through the forgiveness of sins that is found in Jesus Christ. |
| 1/18/2023 | “Survival of the fittest” is an essential principle of evolution. This principle has not only been applied to animals, but also to human beings, as a social theory. Scientists, however, are learning that cooperation among animals is more often the rule. Researchers studied seven pairs of unrelated capuchin monkeys in the lab to see if they would cooperate. The monkey pairs were then placed in an enclosure, one on each side of a mesh screen. Two clear bowls of apple slices were placed on trays designed to be accessible to the monkeys when they pulled on a bar. However, the acquired food would be given only to one of the monkeys. When the bar was set so that both monkeys had to pull on it to get the food, the monkey that received the food shared with his helper. When the bar was set so that one monkey could access the apple slices, he generally didn’t share. Clearly, the monkey who came into control of the food with help, felt that it was his duty to reward his helper. Instead of talking about “survival of the fittest,” one researcher spoke about the “deep evolutionary roots of cooperation.” Unfortunately for evolutionary scientists, real science very often gives good evidence that contradicts the theory of evolution, but we seldom hear of this. Our Magnificent Creator God has designed the creation so that we sometimes need help, or have the opportunity to help others. He did this to remind us that He is our ultimate Helper!!! |
| 1/17/2023 | Bees depend on a good memory of their surroundings to make the thousands of trips necessary to keep their hive in operation. Each day a single bee must make trips to hundreds of flowers, some as far as a mile from the hive. Scientists have long wondered how the tiny bee can remember what may be dozens of square miles of territory. When a bee finds a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and does a dance for the other bees. This dance tells them where a new find is located. Researchers have studied this in detail and can now interpret these dances. Researchers from Princeton University tricked a bee into dancing out a location that turned out to be in the middle of a nearby lake. After receiving the message, the other members of the hive simply ignored their fellow worker. She kept dancing, but no one would believe her. Only later, when the dance clearly said that the flowers were on the opposite side of the lake, did the other bees pay attention and check out the flowers. Researchers are now wondering whether bees keep a mental map of their surroundings. How else could they tell when someone gives them a false location? Evolutionary researchers are trying to figure out how such an “evolutionarily simple” creature as the bee could be so intelligent. However, the Bible makes clear that intelligence is not related to evolution. It is the gift of an all-wise and Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/16/2023 | Most mammals in Australia are marsupials. That is one of the things that makes Australia so special to those of us elsewhere in the world who may never have been there. Think of Australia, and most of us think of kangaroos, koalas, and wombats. Placentals, like rats and rabbits, are normally pests, introduced in colonial times. Yet, there is one placental mammal that is associated with Australia, as a typical wild animal. That is the wild dog known as the dingo. Dingoes are widespread across the continent. There are not many competitors to the dingo, as carnivores. Dingoes can, therefore, be a problem for livestock but are also considered useful in their depredation on rabbits. It appears genetically that dingoes contain the mDNA haplotype A29. MDNA refers to mitochondrial DNA, always inherited from the mother, while a haplotype indicates a group of genes inherited from a single parent. Therefore, it can be assumed that all dingoes are descended from a single female. Of course, we know that, biblically, this will apply to all kinds of animals, but in the case of dingoes, this would appear to be a good deal more recent, generationally, than the animals which emerged from the Ark. This first dingo probably came from SE Asia, and was likely brought to Australia with human migration because the same haplotype is found in 70% of domestic dogs. This makes dingoes a case study in miniature of how populations of animals could quickly migrate and establish their place in eco-systems after the Flood and we owe all wonders of creation to our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/15/2023 | The human body, according to medical science, contains 37 trillion cells that reproduce themselves every seven years. Each one of the 37 trillion cells performs 10,000 different chemical functions, according to the late Dr. Ralph Byron of the City of Hope Cancer Clinic, yet all of them just work together to produce a healthy body. When you get tired, you cannot say, “All right, cell number 843,291, get to work. You are not pulling your share of the load.” All of these cells are linked together by nerve cells tied into a brain containing 100 billion cells (give or take a few). I hesitate to say that these 100 billion nerve cells are tied into a computer‑like device called the human brain since the human brain is far superior to any computer ever created. The eminent neuroscientist Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University in Israel says, “Our ability to understand all the details of even one brain is practically zero.” Only our Magnificent Creator God in all of His brilliance and magnificence could have thought up such a complex piece of creation!!! |
| 1/14/2023 | Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria’s “eyes” and “ears.” The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just “simple” forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction – and even thinking – all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Magnificent Creator God Who made us!!! |
| 1/13/2023 | Previously we discussed the fact that the famous scientist and mathematician Isaac Newton believed Genesis to be a true book. We would probably not want to follow Newton’s theological beliefs, given that they were Arian in nature, but it is not often realized that Newton wrote extensively on the subject of history. His views on history were broadly the same as those of Archbishop James Ussher, whose calculations Newton endorsed. The significance of Newton’s historical writings is that he compared biblical timescales to those of other nations and peoples. He started with an important presupposition – that the biblical timescale is correct. He then proceeded into a great deal of detail about historical chronologies, showing that the comparison with a biblical timescale makes sense and works. Newton went to a great deal of effort to describe his calculations for four key dates: the birth of Lycurgus (708 BC), the return of Heraclides (825 BC), the Fall of Troy (904 BC), and the Argonaut (933 BC). He tied in these dates with biblical dates, relating them, for example, to the death of King Solomon in 975 BC. It is notable that Newton’s chronologies do not agree with many of the modern chronologies which are used to undermine faith in the Bible. For example, it is often said that the dating of the Egyptian Pharaohs cannot be reconciled with a biblical timescale. Newton was, however, familiar with these non-biblical timescales and argues strongly and convincingly for the biblical approach. Newton’s writings are not Gospel. But when such a noted figure of genius produces calculations which are consistent with the Bible’s presentation of the works of our Magnificent Creator God, it is time that people took notice. |
| 1/12/2023 | How does your nose work? Medical researchers admit that they don’t know. Your nose performs an extremely unlikely job. It senses invisible molecules in the air and turns each molecule into a unique sensation that is sent to the brain. If the fact that molecules floating in the air could be detected was a modern discovery, it would be hailed as the scientific discovery of the century! Medical researchers do know that the roof of your nose cavity contains about 10 million cells that are wired directly into the brain. The nervous system that connects your olfactory cells to your brain is so large and complex that its surface area is several times greater than the surface area of your body. Researchers also know that your sense of smell is important to your sense of taste. For example, that’s why – when you have a head cold – chocolate tastes like a flavorless waxy paste. In this case, what you taste in your mouth has more to do with what is happening in your nose than on your tongue. Many creatures, including birds, can sense odors. Farmers who had difficulty with birds eating as much as 20 percent of the food set out in feed lots discovered that birds hate the smell of grapes. When they laced the feed with grape scent, the birds left it alone, but the cattle didn’t seem to mind. Every detail in the creation of everything that has ever existed was planned and created by our Magnificent Creator God who knew that no detail was too small!!! |
| 1/11/2023 | What keeps the big-bodied bumblebee with those little, stubby wings in the air? Scientists are still trying to learn the secret of bumblebee flight. And while they are learning some astonishing things about the bumblebee, they still don’t know how he does it. Scientists have been testing bumblebees by monitoring their energy use, placing them in wind tunnels, and measuring their oxygen use. No, they haven’t been able to make little oxygen masks for the bees – bumblebees have 24 breathing holes. Scientists have learned that a flying bumblebee flaps its wings 160 times per second and consumes the equivalent of 180 candy bars per hour! A flying bee uses the same amount of oxygen for its body weight as a flying bird or a bat. However, unlike birds, the bumblebee uses no more oxygen when hovering than when flying. This is only one of the discoveries that contradict scientists’ theories. In fact, the director of the latest studies on bumblebee flight admits that they still have no idea how the bumblebee stays in the air. He warns other scientists to stop using the current theories on the subject because they are far too simple. Of course, our Magnificent Creator God knows how to make a bumblebee fly, even if the best of modern science can’t figure it out. This should help us to see that when scientists tell us they have figured out how everything could have been made without a Creator, they don’t know what they’re talking about. In His great magnificence God did it and that’s all there is to it!!! |
| 1/10/2023 | Perhaps no type of animal has been used more in biological research than the fruit fly. Certain biological processes such as reproduction or genetic replication are similar in most eukaryote organisms, so observing these in fruit flies might, unlikely as it may seem, have implications for how the processes work in humans. The great volume of academic research which uses the fruit fly as the subject can be seen by the fact that, to date, eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to work involving drosophila. There are several reasons why fruit flies make useful research subjects. From the moment a fruit fly egg has been laid to the moment the adult dies is, on average, about 50 days. The adult flies can mate and lay eggs after just 10 days. This means that three generations can have been studied in a month. A year would yield 36 generations. The effects of inherited genetic problems or defects can, therefore, be analyzed within months, as can the probabilities of genetic problems being inherited by future generations. God has surely designed all that there is for our benefit to help us study and improve our lives in this world. God expects us to use His blessings to help ourselves and to not expect Him to do everything for us. We may need a hole in the ground but our Magnificent Creator God might bless us with a shovel and wisdom to know how to dig!!! |
| 1/9/2023 | Even though many frogs live much of their lives out of the water, they need water to reproduce. This can be a problem since some frogs live in trees and some even live in the desert! For a tree frog, the trip from the treetops to a nearby pool is a long and dangerous journey. However, the Creator cares about all of His creatures. The leaves of the bromeliad that grows in the branches of many trees in the tropical forest form a private pool far above the ground. As a result, mama frog can raise her young without ever leaving the treetops! The desert would seem to offer an even greater challenge for a frog. However, since it pleased the Creator to place frogs in the desert – maybe to challenge the evolutionists – He has also provided for their needs. It may rain only once every two years in the deserts of central Australia. When it does rain, the water-holding frogs emerge from their underground hideaways to lay their eggs in the puddles. Before the puddles disappear, not only do the eggs hatch, but the young grow and develop into frogs that are able to store water until the next rain. As the desert again takes over, the frogs dig themselves back into the ground and go into suspended animation until the next rains come. A year or two later, the new generation will emerge after the next rain to raise their young. Neither chance nor the smartest frog in the world could design or create these abilities. Only a wise Creator could. And if the Creator has provided this much care for frogs, just think of how much more He cares about you and me in our everyday lives! What a Magnificent Creator God He is!!! |
| 1/8/2023 | “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Genesis 2:19 It surely wasn’t possible, we are often told, for Adam to have given names to all the millions of species of animals that exist on earth in the space of one day. Obviously, they tell us, this means that the Bible is wrong. In fact, the activity was nowhere near as arduous as this accusation suggests. The number of animals would be far less than the estimated 2 million species. Adam did not have to go looking for these animals. God brought them to him. God brought three classes of animals to Adam – livestock, birds of the heavens, and beasts of the field. All of these are vertebrates, whereas 98% of all species are invertebrates. Of the remaining 2% – or 40,000 species – many have developed from others (note: developed, not evolved) by the process of speciation. It is likely that the creatures were all descended from just a couple of thousand baramins, or created kinds. It would not be that difficult for Adam to assign a name to each of the animals that paraded before him, especially as he was created perfect, and unlikely to get tired. Suppose he took five seconds to name an animal. He could have named 2,000 animals in 2¾ hours. You might think such a task would be boring, but it was not onerous and would easily fit with all the other activities occurring on that sixth day of our Magnificent Creator God’s creation, including God making the land animals and making Eve from Adam. |
| 1/7/2023 | It has long been assumed that the Siberian woolly rhinoceros died out because of hunting by people. Evolutionists have, in the past, assumed that the extinction of the woolly rhino coincided with the migration of humans to Siberia. Now a new theory has emerged, which was headlined on the Science Daily website as “Ancient genomes suggest woolly rhinos went extinct due to climate change”. Analyses of the genetic make-up of woolly rhinos have been compared with alleged evolutionary dates. As creationists, we do not accept such dates because the Bible makes it clear that the world was created about 6,000 years ago, while the Flood occurred about 4,400 years ago. However, we do agree with the article that woolly rhinos had a common ancestor with the extant five species of rhinoceros. This is not evolution; as we have frequently explained, God made animals according to their kind [baramin] so that, after the Flood, they could cope with changing environmental conditions, adapting by a process called speciation. Scientists now suggest that the end of the Ice Age could have created conditions with which the highly cold-adapted woolly rhino would not have been able to cope. The world would have gone through the Ice Age in the centuries immediately following the Flood as water vapor from warm oceans condensed in a cold atmosphere. As is always the case, good modern scientific research on issues, like the extinction of the woolly rhino, is consistent with the biblical account of the world from our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/6/2023 | A study by the University of Lincoln in England suggested that “global sea level rise of at least 10 centimetres by the end of the 21st century if global warming trends continue”. Their conclusions, they report, are based on 30 years of scientific data in Greenland, looking at the melting of the glaciers on that large ice-covered island. The Greenland ice sheet, say the researchers, could potentially raise the entire world’s sea level by seven meters (about 23 feet). One is reminded of a recent documentary by a well-known politician turned environmental campaigner, which started with film of rapidly running water plunging through holes in the ice of Greenland’s glaciers. The unspoken implication was that this was caused by global warming. In fact, there has been no global warming trend over the last 30 years. Global temperatures rose rapidly in the ‘90s, followed by cooling from 2000 to 2009, with temperatures only picking up again in the last few years. So the idea that the next 80 years of the 21st century will see steady temperature increases is not based on evidence. As is so often the case, we need to recall that God has promised there will be no catastrophic climate change again until the end of the world. Our Magnificent Creator God has plans for every need we will ever have!!! |
| 1/5/2023 | The old joke goes: “What’s gray and has a trunk? A mouse on vacation.” Of course, we know that this is really the description of the world’s favorite animal, the elephant. In another posting, we described Rudyard Kipling’s Just So story about the Elephant Child. But the evolutionary account of how the elephant got its trunk is not really more rational. A look at articles on Wikipedia about the evolution of the elephant reveals that they do not want to discuss the evolutionary appearance of the trunk. But the BBC was not so reticent. On their science pages, they maintain that the evolution of the trunk was essential so that the elephant could get enough food into its mouth to maintain its large size. One biological “law” suggests that the mouth and skull volumes alone are not as large as would be expected on the basis of how much elephants eat. Therefore, the trunk is necessary to get the food into the mouth faster. There are significant problems with simple evolutionary explanations like this. Does the elephant have a trunk because of its large size? In which case, why did the large trunkless elephant not die out? Or did it develop a trunk first, which caused subsequent generations to grow larger? If so, what was the supposed evolutionary advantage of that first trunk if the animal was not large? As we frequently observe, evolution is supposed to proceed one step at a time, not two! We would observe that these features of an elephant are exactly what we would expect since they are designed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 1/4/2023 | The Willow Warbler is a fascinating little bird. It weighs less than half an ounce and measures about four inches from its beak to the tip of its tail. It likes open woodland with small trees and is particularly happy in areas managed by humans, such as coppices and young plantations. An attractive little bird, it is greenish-brown from above, with a yellowish underside. Willow Warblers are part of the Leaf Warbler, or Phylloscopus baramin (or created kind). There are 77 species in this baramin, but we are interested here in the species Phylloscopus trochilu, especially the subspecies Phylloscopus trochilus yakutensi. This remarkable little bird has the most incredible migratory behavior, traveling about 7,500 miles. Between April and August, the birds live and breed in eastern Siberia. But as the breeding season ends, the birds begin their long, exhausting flight to sub Saharan Africa, where they will spend the winter, from October through March. Then they begin the 7,500-mile journey back to Siberia. That’s 15,000 miles per year! The reason why these warblers migrate seems clear. They do not like the extremes of temperatures in either of their homes. But a more interesting question is: How do they know where to migrate? Scientists have speculated that migratory birds are able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. But those scientists who believe in evolution have to explain how the birds used trial and error to find their routes. A more logical explanation is that our Magnificent Creator God designed them to achieve this remarkable feat!!! |
| 1/3/2023 | There are between 10,000 and 15,000 species of orchids. While you surely are not familiar with all of them, it sounds strange to talk about orchid behavior. This huge variety of orchids offers a multitude of different flower shapes, colors and sizes. Each unique shape, color and size is perfectly suited to the bees, butterflies, bats, moths, flies and birds that are involved in that orchid’s pollination. Those orchids that use birds as pollinators have no scent. Instead, they offer the brightest of colors, appealing to the birds’ strongest sense. Evolutionists call this “co-evolution.” However, giving it a name doesn’t explain it. How did these orchids know that the bird’s strongest sense is sight? And how were these orchids able to perform genetic recombination on themselves so that they could develop their bright colors? No, giving something a scientific-sounding name doesn’t make naturalistic claims any more scientific. Or consider the bee orchid. It offers a flower that looks like a female bee. The purpose here is to attract male bees to a position that will load them with pollen. How can it be scientific to suggest that a plant purposely restructured itself to fool bees into pollinating it? God has purposely made it impossible to explain the creation without Him. He did this not simply so that we would see that He is real. His purpose is much greater. Our Magnificent Creator God seeks a personal relationship with you and has made that possible through the saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. It is to Christ that He would ultimately draw our attention!!! |
| 1/2/2023 | When you look through the Bible, there is one interesting land animal type which is missing. There is nothing to say that a pair of them got on the Ark, but we have to assume that they did so that they survived until after the Flood. Today, we just think of them strutting around the world, vicious killers, waiting for the opportunity to spring on their next prey. I am, of course, referring to that well-known animal kind – the cat. Yes, that’s right. The word “cat” is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Yet we know they exist, and, as land animals, they must have been created on Day Six. The Bible, however does mention two members of the cat kind – lions and leopards. But these animals can hybridize and are therefore part of the same kind. Therefore, the Ark would not have had a pair of lions and a pair of leopards – just a pair of cats. What sort of cats would have been on the Ark? They would not have been tiny domestic cats which have insufficient genetic material to be responsible for all of today’s cat species. It is more likely that the cats on the Ark were similar to the famous Saber-toothed cats found in the fossil record. Recent scientific studies on a semi-fossilized saber-toothed cat bone found in the North Sea shows that it shared a common ancestor with all other cat species. This DNA research is compelling. Descent and variation happen within a kind, but not from creatures of other kinds – exactly what we expect when we assume the Bible, inspired by our Magnificent Creator God, to be true!!! |
| 1/1/2023 | Honeydew is one of the favorite foods of ants. There are a number of insects, including thorn bugs and aphids, who consume so much honeydew that they cannot digest it all. These insects are designed so that ants can milk them for the excess honeydew, just the way a farmer obtains milk from a cow. Many species of ants will milk the honeydew-collecting insect by stroking its abdomen with its antennae. The tree hopper actually slows its secretion of excess honeydew to the milking ant so that the ant may drink his honeydew “fresh from the cow” so to speak. Some ants construct clay pens and shelters in which they enclose certain species of aphids, just as a farmer keeps his herd. Like the farmer, the ants move the aphids to better honeydew feeding sites when necessary. They also care for the aphid eggs during the winter. Herding ants are even better able to protect a young tree hopper than its parents. It is not unusual for a tree hopper parent to turn her young over to herding ants because they can do more for the young insect than she can. Such complex relationships between creatures points to a God who is both a Magnificent Creator God and Teacher—even to insects!!! |
| 12/31/2022 | You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! Our Magnificent Creator God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
| 12/30/2022 | How many ants are there in the world? No one has actually counted them all or asked them to fill out little ant census forms. However, scientists have estimated that there are about 10 million billion ants in the world, waiting for you to have a picnic. That’s more ants than there are mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians combined. God made so many ants because ants are important housekeepers for the earth. Ants, not earthworms, turn most of the world’s soil, drain it, and enrich it. Ants dispose of 90% of the corpses of small dead animals. As the world’s gardeners, ants spread and plant more seeds than any other creature. Like bees, ants have a sophisticated society, which includes workers, nurses, soldiers, hunters, farmers, and even builders. Each of these different classes have specialized organs for their work. The soldier ants of one species are walking bombs. They are loaded with poison and literally explode when under attack, spraying poison on their enemies. Army ants in Central and South America march across the countryside in a line that can be nearly 50 feet long. The solid column sweeps along, flushing out even small animals, as it looks for food. The huge variety of living things around us represents more than simply variety. That variety carefully includes creatures to do every job that needs to be done to maintain life on earth. This, in itself, is a witness to both the creativity and wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 12/29/2022 | Presumably, before the fall into sin, we didn’t have any bad cholesterol, or at least it didn’t do any damage in our bloodstream. The so-called “bad cholesterol” is low-density-lipoprotein. It’s called bad because it tends to cause our arteries to clog unless countered by the so-called “good cholesterol” or high-density-lipoprotein. Based on earlier research, scientists wanted to test the idea that substances in orange juice could improve levels of good cholesterol. Volunteers had their cholesterol levels checked on a regular basis during the test period. After six weeks of a low cholesterol diet, they were to drink one glass of orange juice every day for four weeks. The result was a 5 percent increase in the good cholesterol. Then they drank two glasses of orange juice per day for four weeks. The result was another 7 percent increase in good cholesterol. Then they were directed to drink three glasses per day. The result was a 27 percent overall improvement. Surprisingly, researchers found that five weeks after they stopped the three glasses-a-day portion of the experiment, their good cholesterol remained high. We can be thankful that, in His perfect foreknowledge, our Magnificent Creator God created some foods that counter the effects of sin on us!!! We can be even more thankful that His plan to save us from our sins was in place even before there was sin!!! |
| 12/28/2022 | If you live in a temperate climate, you have probably heard your home pop and crack on cold days. Those sounds are caused by the different materials that make up your house contracting at different rates as the temperature falls. At some point, the growing tensions are released, and you hear the result. If you live in a warm climate that is subject to hurricanes, you know that a building is likely to fail at the point where different parts of the house, like the roof and wall, meet together. Buildings are made up of a large number of things, each of which acts differently under the same conditions. That makes for weak points in any structure. British architects have looked at the structure of living things to find an answer to this problem. They noted that skeletons can work well under conditions that would cause many other building materials to fail. One researcher noted that a skeleton is more efficient than any man-made structure. One architect’s suggestion was to build structures like walls and bridges out of artificial bone that is formed to the needs of the structure. We should not be surprised that, once again, man is looking to the living world for solutions to his problems. The living world, like everything else, was designed by our all-wise Magnificent Creator God Who does all things well!!! |
| 12/27/2022 | Evolutionists often claim that language and music evolved independently of each other. However, new research along several lines is showing that there is a close connection between music and language. Researchers have been studying the effect of music on verbal comprehension. Electrical activity within the brain was tracked, using electrodes attached to the scalps of volunteers. They found that those volunteers who had just heard the trilling of flutes, for example, identified the word “bird” a split second faster than those who had not heard the music. This effect is called priming. When volunteers heard a church anthem, they more quickly identified the word “devotion” than those who did not. The study showed that these effects were consistent, whether the words had concrete meanings, were cultural references, or were abstract concepts. Other research has shown that when a region of the brain called Broca’s area is damaged, both recognition of harmonic chords as well as language are impaired, also suggesting a connection between language and music. Both music and language are gifts of God. As the Psalmist noted, the songs he sang were placed into his mouth by God. Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve could talk the day they were created. While music isn’t mentioned, we see that within a couple of generations, they were making musical instruments and must therefore have played music. Isn’t it apparent that the hand of our Magnificent Creator God gave us music and voice with which we should praise Him!!! |
| 12/26/2022 | According to the theory of evolution, all life is related. There is claimed to be a hierarchy of rising complexity from the earliest simple organisms to man. The earliest organisms are said to include corals, sea anemones and jellyfish that thrived 500 million years ago. These early creatures eventually led to the first creatures to move onto land, and worms were among them. Based on this supposed evolutionary history, one would expect the DNA of humans to be closer to worms than to coral. However, recent mapping of the DNA of these creatures has produced some surprises. While corals have the simplest nervous system of any animal, their genetic sequences are similar to those in human nervous systems. Even more strange is that worms, which are supposed to stand between us and the corals, lack these sequences. These sequences are called ESTs. Researchers have found that, in general, coral ESTs tended to be closer to human ESTs than to worm ESTs. Baffled by this and still convinced that evolution is true, the scientists simply assumed that worms must have lost these DNA sequences. However, they stressed that more creatures need to be studied. Would it not be simpler to conclude that corals, worms, people and everything else were made by the same Magnificent Creator God Who created specific DNA coding for each creature without concern for evolutionary history? |
| 12/25/2022 | Before time began, God had in His mind’s eye a masterpiece—a beautiful picture of grace that His beloved Son, the second person of the Trinity, would illustrate with His life. Even before the breathtaking splendor of creation, God sketched out His plan for His perfect fellowship with humanity. But not long after He had splashed color on the landscape, the deep, dark shadows of man’s rebellious choice to live independently of His grace obscured the beauty of God’s work. Coal black, pitch darkness enveloped the scene, and all creation hung in suspense of what God would do. How could God redeem His masterpiece? What could rescue us, the pitiful portraits in whom breathed God’s breath? Then, with a heart weeping for His people, God dipped His brush in Calvary’s scarlet ink, wrote His message on a rough wooden banner, and pinned it against an empty sky for all the world to read. Bold, crimson words: “I love you.” This is the message of Christmas: Because He loves us, our Magnificent Creator God has come to redeem us—to bring life and color back to our lives, to expel the darkness of our hearts and from our world!!! |
| 12/24/2022 | The Clark’s Nutcracker is an amazing bird. Every year it prepares for winter by hiding tiny caches of four or five whitebark pine seeds, as many as five hundred seeds per hour. Then, months later, it returns to uncover the seeds, even under heavy snow. A Clark’s Nutcracker may remember as many as ten thousand locations where it has hidden seeds—an astounding feat (especially when you consider the difficulty we humans can have remembering the location of our car keys or glasses). But even this incredible act of memory pales in comparison with God’s ability to remember our prayers. He’s able to keep track of every sincere prayer and remember and respond to them even years later. In the book of Revelation, the apostle John describes “four living creatures” and “twenty-four elders” worshiping the Lord in heaven. Each one was “holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (5:8). Just as incense was precious in the ancient world, our prayers are so precious to our Magnificent Creator God that He keeps them before Him continually, treasured in golden bowls! Our prayers matter to God because we matter to Him, and through His undeserved kindness to us in Jesus He offers us uninhibited access (Hebrews 4:14–16). So we can pray boldly! And know that not a word will be forgotten or misplaced because of the amazing love of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 12/23/2022 | About 300 years after the Genesis Flood, when all people spoke the same language, they decided to work together to build a great city. Working together for a common goal is called “social intelligence.” Do animals practice social intelligence? Of course, there are the bees, the ants and the beavers, but even bacteria – among the lowliest of all creatures can also show social intelligence! Several types of common bacteria have shown evidence of social intelligence. Contrary to expectation, sometimes this cooperation takes place between unrelated types at the expense of genetically related individuals. Bacterial colonies where cooperation is taking place always attract freeloaders. Such colonies often find ways to discourage or even kill the freeloaders. One such cooperative community is a common soil bacterium. When they locate prey, they swim over the prey like a pack of wolves. Many species of bacteria remain relatively singular until they sense that they have enough to form a community. Then, they communicate to each other by releasing certain molecules which the others sense, and they form slime mold colonies, or biofilm. Cooperation and a result of social intelligence can be used to do good or evil. But it doesn’t matter where they are on the imagined evolutionary tree. Our Magnificent Creator God has given social abilities to many of His creatures as a means of helping their kind to survive!!! |
| 12/22/2022 | We are surrounded by sounds, some of which can be louder than an airliner taking off. Yet, we never hear these sounds. It’s called infrasound. It’s real sound that can be recorded if you have the right equipment. Infrasound waves are below 20 hertz, the lowest frequency that we can hear. Because the sound waves are long, they can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles. Volcanic eruptions regularly generate infrasound and so does the wind. But, perhaps most interestingly, these beautiful Northern Lights that often color the night sky also generate infrasound. The sound is produced when the incoming solar particles push the air forward. While we are not able to hear infrasound, it does influence us. Researchers in England placed an infrasound generator in a concert hall, and during the performance, infrasound was added at selected points. After the concert, the audience was asked about their emotions during certain passages of music, or if they had had experienced any strange feelings during the concert. Researchers concluded that infrasound intensified whatever emotional state the music had produced in people. So, if you have ever watched the Northern Lights and thought you were almost hearing something, it was likely the infrasound you were sensing. The more we learn about the creation our Magnificent Creator God has given us, the more we find to marvel at how excellent in His workmanship!!! |
| 12/21/2022 | God created animals to reproduce according to their kind. As the Hebrew word for created is bārā, and that for kind is min, creation biologists use the term baramin to describe the entire created kind that God made on days five and six. God made the first animals in each baramin with the genetic ability to adapt, so that over the millennia, these have changed into multiple species, especially after the Flood. Creation biologists suggest that the baramin is usually equivalent to the evolutionary taxonomic level known as the family. There are, however, some exceptions to this rule. In the Americas, there is a family of animals known as peccaries. These look very similar to Old World pigs. The confusion is exacerbated by pigs having been imported to the Americas by European settlers, and then having become feral. Evolutionists emphasize that peccaries and pigs are two different families, although they think they must have had a common ancestor within the suborder known as suina. It is true that there are some morphological differences between the two families, and no hybrids have so far been discovered between pigs and peccaries. Yet, peccaries look unmistakably like pigs. Both have a two-chambered stomach – though this is more complex in peccaries. Also, both families have a duplicated gene which is not found in any other mammals. For these reasons and more, creation biologists are surely correct in considering the whole suborder to be one baramin, created by our Magnificent Creator God on Day Six. |
| 12/20/2022 | If your measuring stick is inaccurate, you could end up with too much wallpaper or too little. If your map tells you that your destination is 200 miles away when it’s really only 50 miles away, you might drive right past it. If your map of the universe is inaccurate and stars are a lot closer than you expect, you will arrive at the wrong age for the universe. Most science textbooks solemnly teach that the universe is 10 to 20 billion years old. A distant galaxy in the Virgo cluster is one of the primary measuring sticks used by astronomers to figure out the distance of other objects in space. Ultimately these distances are used to compute the age of the universe. Recently, though, astronomers were finally able to see individual stars in this distant cluster. Using a new, high-resolution camera, astronomers saw stars that are very much like stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. Since they know how bright these stars are, they were able to check their computations on how far away the measuring-stick galaxy is. Instead of the expected 100 million light-years, their new figures told them that the galaxy was only 50 million light-years away. This means that the universe might only be half as old as they thought. The lesson for us in this is that the millions and billions of years many scientists talk about are mere speculation. Many measuring sticks for the age of the universe are available, and many of them support an age in the biblical range of only thousands of years. The only source for the age of this universe is the one who created it – our Magnificent Creator God himself!!! |
| 12/19/2022 | In previous postings, we discussed how a discovery of some teeth and some ankle bones, or tarsals, at Dormaal in Belgium, has led to evolutionary scientists believing they have found a missing link between dogs, cats and bears. They picture a little two-pound creature, scurrying through the branches of trees; yet, not a single complete or even nearly complete skeleton has been found. Creationist researcher Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell has explained the evolutionary thinking process involved. Evolutionary researchers made a number of assumptions which simply do not add up. First, evolutionists assume that the fact that there is a wide variety of animal species on the planet, that this is actually proof that they have a common ancestor. Common ancestry is, therefore, assumed and is a basic, unshakeable belief without any real proof whatsoever. Second, they assume that comparing the features of various fossils can enable them to line them up in an evolutionary history. This is despite the fact that there has never been an observation of one kind of animal evolving into another. Third, millions of years have to be assumed in order to give time for the alleged evolution, which has never been actually observed to take place. Dr. Mitchell says, “There is no biological evidence for the divergence of canines, cats, and bears from a common carnivorous ancestor… There is no scientific justification for insisting that in the unobservable past they evolved into more complex and divergent kinds of animals from a common ancestor.” Only our Magnificent Creator God can understand the how and why behind every creature that has ever roamed this incredible planet we call home!!! |
| 12/18/2022 | Some people have the green thumb in their family. Others may complain that they fail with plants because plants don’t tell them when they need care. Of course, most people can do well with family pets, who are enthusiastic about letting their needs be known. Now scientists have learned that plants do indeed cry out when they need attention. We just haven’t heard them because the sounds made by a thirsty plant are about five times higher-pitched than we can hear. But scientists with tiny, specialized microphones have heard corn plants calling for water. During their study, researchers learned that plants make a great deal of noise. Corn leaves and stalks make noises as they slide against each other during growth. We have all heard the sound of plant leaves rattling in the wind. Corn stalks also make noise as they bend in the wind. However, another sound was heard when the corn didn’t have enough water. It was a high-pitched popping noise. Plants have water tubes in them that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the leaves. Water flows up these tubes under tension. When there is not enough water, the tension becomes too great and the tubes fracture. The popping is the sound of those tubes fracturing. The result of fractured tubes is a wilted plant. When water is restored, the tubes refill, the popping noises stop, and the plant again looks healthy. The purpose of this research was to learn when to water crops and how much water they need. Now that we have learned how plants communicate, crops can tell farmers when to water! Aren’t we blessed to have a Magnificent Creator God that took care of so much minute detail!!! |
| 12/17/2022 | Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for our Magnificent Creator God’s complete attention!!! |
| 12/16/2022 | Con men develop elaborate schemes to cheat people out of their money or other possessions. Successful cons are cleverly and intelligently directed toward the con man’s goal. We would not expect such intelligently directed, albeit sinful, behavior in animals, except that the Bible tells us that deceit is the way of the world since sin has entered the creation. To their surprise, two groups of researchers have discovered a number of animals that try to con their own kind. One group of researchers spent two years standing in ponds, getting to know green frogs. They discovered that when an intruding frog enters a frog community, even the younger males attempt to intimidate him by croaking at a much lower pitch than normal. This makes even the young frog sound like the bigger members of the community, bluffing the intruder. Another team studied Afro-Asian fiddler crabs. When one of the male crabs loses its claw, it will grow back only slowly. So the crab quickly grows a fake claw until the new one grows in. The fake claw is useless for fighting, but works well in aggressive claw waving at other males. It can also be used in the claw waving that is part of the crabs’ mating ritual. Females prefer the fastest waving claws, so the lighter fake claws, which wave faster, are a real advantage. Only our Magnificent Creator God could have planned a universe so complete that even the smallest details were included!!! |
| 12/15/2022 | Many people today tend to dismiss the early chapters of Genesis as legend rather than history. However, if the Bible’s story of the Flood and the Tower of Babel are not history there are some established historical facts that have no explanation. According to the Bible, after the great Flood, people multiplied but failed to scatter over the face of the earth as commanded by God. Having one language, most of the people stayed in one location and built a great city. It was not until God confused their language that they scattered across the earth. If these events did not take place, how do we explain the fact that a 6th century B.C. Chinese writer describes the ultimate God Who created all things in much the same way as an ancient Egyptian writer? And why would these descriptions match 8th century B.C. Greek writings? While it is true that each of these cultures had their unique gods, their ancient writings about the Creator use special language. Lao-tzu was an 8th century B.C. writer who described the ultimate God as eternal and self-existing. Likewise, an ancient Egyptian writer described the ultimate God as the source of everything in the heavens and on earth as well as all life. If man was not once of one culture and language, how did all these ancient writers each get the same story to tell? The similarities between these descriptions and those of other cultures bear witness to the historicity of even the earliest parts of Genesis – all performed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 12/14/2022 | If you want to learn a new subject, find a master at the subject and copy them. If you want to lose weight, find someone who has already lost weight. If you want to program video games, find the ace games programmer and become her apprentice. And if you want to design ingenious and innovative new materials, go to the master designer Himself – God. Unfortunately, many engineers who might benefit from imitating God’s material designs do not give Him the glory, maintaining instead that they are imitating nature. One example of material design, following what is seen of God’s design in nature, is that of fish scales. Scientists at Montreal’s McGill University experimented on fish scales by puncturing them and examining the results under microscopes. If you have work gloves, you will know that you need them to be both flexible and strong. They should be strong enough to resist puncture, yet flexible enough to allow comfortable working. McGill University’s François Barthelat realized that fish scales had the properties required. The fish’s skin is indeed flexible, but it was discovered that individual scales are very tough and are actually well resistant to puncture and damage. Barthelat’s team discovered how fish scales fractured, deformed and interacted in order to develop new materials based on the properties that they discovered. Their resulting artificial scales had to be made in a manner akin to overlapping tiles, so that large surfaces could be covered. The whole process relies on the research into materials, which could only have been designed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 12/13/2022 | The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, reminds us to “Remember your Creator”. Why do we need to remember Him? It is because everything that we value has come from Him. If we do not reference everything to God, then it is all meaningless, just like trying to grab hold of the air. Most of us have times when we do not know where to turn. We spend so long wondering who can help us through our difficult times, when the answer is within us. It perhaps sounds trite to some to say that God is always with us and that He will listen to our needs. It might sound trite – but it’s true. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”, says the Psalmist. “Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. (Psalms 46:1-3) It is often the very work of God in creation that brings us back to hopefulness. If God could fling the stars into space, if God can move the mountains and control the waves, then He can deal with my little problem. We are told “Remember your Creator… before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1-2) Our problems are of more concern to Our Magnificent Creator God than the light of the stars. We can turn to Him – “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him”. |
| 12/12/2022 | The leviathan of Job 41 appears to be a ferocious creature. It cannot be caught with any sort of hook. It cannot be captured by harpoon, either through its jaw or its nose. The description given in Job 41 is that of an enormous sea monster with great strength, defensive armor, and able to breathe fire. This last attribute has led many to suggest that the creature is not real but only mythical. After all, the passage makes leviathan sound like a fire-breathing dragon, and there is no such thing, is there? It is certainly very difficult to ascertain what leviathan could have been. However, a biblical presupposition will tell us that, whatever our confusion, the animal must have been real and must have possessed all the attributes ascribed to it. Several candidates have been suggested in the past. Perhaps, for example, it could have been some sort of plesiosaur. It is interesting that many versions of the Bible footnote the creature and suggest that it was a crocodile. However, the same versions tend to refer to behemoth as a hippopotamus, when it seems clear to me that behemoth was a sauropod. One interesting, suggested candidate is a huge extinct creature called sarcosuchus. This animal looked a bit like, and could have been related to, modern crocodiles. However, it was 36 feet long, and its weight is estimated at 8 tons. It also had a large cavity inside its bulbous snout. Could this have been an organ to produce heat? Sarcosuchus may or may not have been leviathan. But leviathan certainly existed, and its description in Job 41 is clear. Is there any doubt that if our Magnificent Creator God could create the whole world and everything in it, a fire-breathing dragon would be nothing but a brief thought and it would have come into existence!!! |
| 12/11/2022 | How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements that we find in the plant and animal kingdoms that our Magnificent Creator God has designed!!! |
| 12/10/2022 | Most of us are familiar with the body’s response to foreign tissue. Transplant patients must be carefully matched and then patients still must be given powerful drugs to prevent destruction of the transplanted tissue. Our bodies’ immune system identifies tissue that’s not its own and then tries to destroy that tissue. As we have learned more about the immune system, doctors began asking themselves why a pregnant mother’s body doesn’t reject the foreign tissue of the baby growing inside her. The answer to this mystery is not fully understood, but research has suggested some answers. From conception the unborn child is a genetically unique individual. Researchers think that the most important protection the unborn child has is the trophoblast. This tissue, known as the caul, seals the growing infant from its mother. However, the trophoblast itself develops from the same cells as the infant. So why doesn’t the mother’s immune system attack? It appears that under normal conditions the trophoblast is a special set of cells that the body cannot identify as foreign. In addition, the trophoblast makes cells that encourage the mother’s immune system to protect it. Scientists now believe that this amazing feature may actually be provided by the father’s genetic information. In effect, the baby, with the help of the father, immunizes the mother’s system so that it doesn’t reject the baby! So, even before birth, the mother nurtures and the father protects the child. What a Magnificent Creator God we have!!! |
| 12/9/2022 | In a clever scheme of self-protection, the more poisonous the male rattlebox moth is, the more prized he is by the female rattlebox moth. In the caterpillar stage the male moth favors the pods of certain legumes. These pods contain a powerful poison that seems to have no effect on the caterpillar. After the caterpillar has become a moth and it’s time for mating, the male releases a scent produced by the poison. Those who have more poison in their bodies release a stronger scent, while those with little poison release only a weak scent. Female rattlebox moths prefer males with a strong scent. During mating the male coats the eggs with some of the poison, making them unpalatable to predators, like ladybugs, who might eat the eggs. So the more poison a male has, the better protected the female’s eggs will be. Studies have shown that female rattlebox moths will ignore males that have collected no poison. Likewise, the male of the queen butterfly species collects another plant poison in his system. This poison is produced by plants for protection against insects. The butterfly doesn’t attack the plant; rather he drinks the poison from already injured plants. Here, too, the female queen butterfly favors those males with the most poison. It appears that human beings are not the only creatures who go to the drug store to get needed medicines. Our Magnificent Creator God has provided the animal world with their own drug store and the knowledge of how to use the chemicals He has provided!!! |
| 12/8/2022 | We are all familiar with the concept of the Ice Age – probably due to the eponymous cartoon feature film series. Evolutionists believe that this event took place about 2.6 million years ago. There is considerable evidence around the world of valleys carved by glaciation, and glacial moraines – deposits of rocky debris left at the end of glaciers. In a biblical framework, it is relatively easy to explain how the Ice Age could have happened. Instead of beginning 2.6 million years ago, we think that the Ice Age began in the immediate post-Flood period as oceans warmer than today evaporated into an atmosphere cooler than today. However, evolutionary geologists do not believe in just one Ice Age. They believe that the Earth has been through a cyclical path of continual ice ages and times of more temperate climate. Their evidence for this is found in rocks which bear scratch marks similar to those damaged during the known Ice Age. Indeed, evolutionists suppose that some of these earlier ice ages could have had ice sheets covering nearly the whole Earth. Such a scenario causes a problem. It can be seen that this sort of ice age would perhaps have caused a snowball effect. That is to say that most of the Earth could be covered by a white ice covering which would reflect most of the Sun’s heat away. In that case, it is difficult to see how the ice could ever have melted to return Earth to temperate conditions. Creationist researchers have shown that the effects interpreted as early ice ages could more easily be explained as being caused by landslides and other geological movements created by our Magnificent Creator God during the Flood!!! |
| 12/7/2022 | The word prehistoric refers to a period of time before there were people on the Earth. Evolutionists assume that to have been for millions of years, so their accounts of the majority of fossils would refer to them as prehistoric. As Bible believers, we know that God made everything in the Creation Week, so there was no prehistoric time. So the recent discovery of a baby ichthyosaurus in Britain would be described as prehistoric by evolutionists, but not by us. This baby ichthyosaurus was found associated with fossilized hooks, which would appear to be from the tentacles of a squid. Therefore, this ichthyosaurus’s last meal was calamari! It is not unusual to find fossils in situ with the remains of their last meal. However, this would seem to be a problem for evolutionists. They are usually obliged to think that a fossil has formed quite slowly. Time is involved, as the body of the creature gets covered by sediment. Yet, a creature fossilized with its food is likely to have been fossilized very fast, so that the food did not get the chance to rot away before the fossil was formed. This is true of this baby ichthyosaurus. It is also true of the famous fossil in London’s Natural History Museum showing one ichthyosaurus giving birth to another. The most likely explanation for the formation of these fossils is the sudden and catastrophic burial of these creatures by mud and silt in the early stages of the worldwide Flood. Even though the debate by evolutionists and creationists will probably continue to the end of time, there is more and more evidence every day that our Magnificent Creator God created everything that ever was and ever will be in one magnificent week as He displayed His awesome power!!! |
| 12/6/2022 | Many people are aware that evolutionary astrophysicists believe that the Earth came into existence about 4.5 billion years ago. The formation of this planet-size lump of rock allegedly happened by gravitational accretion from the dust that had previously swirled around the Sun. One grain of dust would attract another. Gradually, one lump would attract another. This would keep repeating until a planet-sized object appeared. There are two main problems with this scenario, apart from the fact that it is not described that way in the Bible. First, why would particles of dust or small stones stick together by gravity? If this were a normal thing to happen, then why has it not subsequently happened in the asteroid belt? The second problem is that even if such accretion were possible, it would only produce a planet-sized lump of amorphous rock. But the Earth has structure, with a solid crust, semi-molten mantle, and molten inner and outer core. So evolutionary astrophysicists suppose that about 3.9 billion years ago, another planet, about the size of Mars, crashed into the Earth, and vaporized. This caused the Earth to melt so that it could reset in the “correct” order. Although this model is a lot more sophisticated than this simplified version, it still seems to be something of a fiddle-factor – an invented story to attempt to explain the inexplicable. In contrast, the Bible tells us that the Earth was a direct creation by God and that the rest of the Solar System – and, indeed, the rest of the universe – was formed three days later, again as a direct creative act of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 12/5/2022 | Fireflies may help light the way to new medical breakthroughs. The gentle glow of a firefly on a summer evening is produced by the chemical luciferase. The firefly has a gene with the code that makes this chemical. When that gene is added to the genetic information of other plants or animals, the cells begin to glow harmlessly. Researchers have been using the firefly gene to test their ability to add genetic information to a cell. When human heart arteries become clogged, a medicine called TPA is among the treatments doctors use. TPA is a natural clot-dissolving protein that helps prevent heart attacks. The problem is, without a continuous supply of TPA, the artery may reclog. It would help if the artery could make its own TPA 24 hours a day. Since TPA is a natural protein for which there is a genetic code, researchers wanted to know if genetic information could be added to artery cells. To find out, they injected dogs with the genetic code for luciferase. If genetic information could be added to the cells through this method, they would actually see the results in the glowing tissue. Tissue samples taken three days later did, in fact, have the distinctive glow of the firefly proving that the method works. They warn that several years of research lie ahead before artery cells may be able to dissolve their own clots. Those glowing fireflies that delight children and adults show God’s design in the creation in an unexpected way. The chemical that makes the glow is proving to be an important tool of medical science. What a Magnificent Creator God we have to preplan our needs!!! |
| 12/4/2022 | The world is a frightening place without God. This fear can be seen today in fears that modern people often confuse with science. Several years ago stories of gloom and doom about a greenhouse heating of the earth were starting to fill the media. The people at Creation Moments looked at the scientific basis for these claims. They wanted to know if the greenhouse warming of the earth was a true threat or just another fear of a godless people. They then published the conclusion that the thin and conflicting evidence for greenhouse warming most likely came from the heat island effect of growing cities around some of the temperature measuring sites. Knowing the elegance with which God designed everything in creation, creationists suspected that God probably designed the earth with built-in thermostats that help keep it from warming up too much. When the Pacific Ocean warms more than normal, it sends increasing amounts of water vapor into the air. If heating continues, the water vapor will actually cause the heating to increase until vapor is forced higher into the atmosphere, creating icy cirrus clouds. These clouds reflect enough incoming sunlight to shut down the temperature increase and return things to normal. We are called to be good stewards of the earth. We can be good stewards in joyful service, freed from the fears that afflict those who don’t know God. What a Magnificent Creator God we have!!! |
| 12/3/2022 | Many textbooks tell young people today that birds are modified reptiles. Suppose, they say, that millions of years ago the scales on some reptiles began to fray along the edges. In time, they say, the frayed scales turned into feathers and birds were born. The elegance and beauty of the feather make this story hard to believe. Can sticking a feather on a lizard produce a peacock? The bird’s feather is only a small part of the complete flying system of the bird. Even with very careful planning and redesigning, a reptile doesn’t have what it takes. A bird needs massive breast muscles for flight. In some birds, 30% of the body weight of the bird is breast muscle. By comparison, in humans breast muscles are only about 1% of body weight. A bird also needs an extremely high metabolism and blood pressure to deliver the energy those muscles need for flight. Birds have a higher metabolism than any other creature; they also have the necessary high blood pressure. Finally, as is well known, birds need light skeletons. The man-o’-war has a wingspan of seven feet. But its entire skeleton weighs only a few ounces—less than its feathers! Even the most clever rebuilding of a reptile cannot produce a bird. In fact, birds have very little in common with reptiles. The entire being of the bird, from body to brain, has been specially designed for flight by our Magnificent Creator God who clearly knows everything there is to know about flight!!! |
| 12/2/2022 | Life on Earth began somewhere between 3.7 and 4.5 billion years ago, after meteorites splashed down and leached essential elements into warm little ponds, say scientists. These scientists, from McMaster University, have run probability calculations and reckon that Earth life could have begun as ponds on Earth took in long-chain compounds from meteorites to form a sort of broth from which life could emerge. This is really a new twist on the panspermia model. Panspermia is the idea that life on Earth was seeded from space, and the idea of molecules on meteorites has been a popular supposition for some time. In the current model, these scientists are not suggesting that the meteorites housed living cells, but rather that they added the right ingredient mix to the primordial soup of ancient Earth. This research acknowledges that “DNA is too complex to have been the first aspect of life to emerge. It had to start with something else, and that is RNA.” Many scientists have begun to acknowledge the impossibility of evolution on Earth. But imagining that there was some sort of seeding from space, however vague, merely pushes the problem to another realm. How would the proposed long-chain molecules have developed on these meteorites? Or did the meteorites come from another source, such as Mars? As is so often the case, research papers like these simply point out the fact that evolution has no answer to the problem of where life came from. In contrast, the Bible has a very clear answer. Genesis 1:1 – The very first verse in the very first book of the Bible – clearly reveals that in the beginning our Magnificent Creator God created the heavens and the earth!!! |
| 12/1/2022 | While the Bible teaches us that sex is a wonderful gift of God, evolutionists believe that sexual reproduction should not have evolved. According to evolutionists, if sexual reproduction were to develop, evolution is supposed to get rid of it. To make matters worse, immobile plants use sexual reproduction. This creates a problem in transferring the male genes to the female for fertilization. Just to confound things even more, God uses insects and even mammals to transfer the pollen. Since evolutionists believe that plants were around for many millions of years before animals, evolutionists have yet another problem. The European family of the Arum lilies attracts beetles and flies. When one of the insects lands on a flower, he finds a slick, oil-coated surface and ends up sliding down into a chamber filled with small hairs. Imprisoned, he finds a sweet sap that makes good eating. While he is gorging himself on the sap and getting sticky in the process, the male part of the flower showers him with pollen. The next day, the sticky, pollen-coated insect finds that the doors to his prison are open. So he flies off to another flower to unwittingly deliver his load of pollen! It sounds like science fiction to say that a flower figured out how to do this. And it certainly doesn’t sound very scientific to say that nobody designed and made this complex arrangement. As we learn more about these arrangements in nature, it becomes even more clear that our all-wise Magnificent Creator God designed these beautiful, symbiotic relationships between different members of the living kingdom!!! |
| 11/30/2022 | The yellow-and-black striped archer fish shops among the insects that land on branches overhanging his pond in the peaceful waters of the East Indies. Sometimes he will wait under a branch until something that would make a good lunch lands on it. When the archer fish finds a tasty-looking insect, he shoots an accurately aimed stream of water at his prey, knocking the insect into the water. Before the insect has a chance to recover, the archer fish has eaten him and is looking for dessert. The archer fish has a deep groove in his mouth. When he places his tongue against this groove, he ends up with a blow tube that is about 1/16-inch in diameter. Compressing his gills forces pressurized water through the blow pipe. The rounded tip of the archer fish’s tongue acts as a valve so the fish can shoot a few small bursts or one long stream of water at his prey. The archer fish seldom misses if his prey is within four feet. This simple but elegant arrangement is testimony to a wise and skillful Creator. Neither mindless chance evolution nor any fish could be smart enough to design this system. Nor could any fish redesign his normal mouth tissues into this unique tool. Here we see that our Magnificent Creator God even cares about providing the needs of a fish. We know that He cares even more about our lives! In fact, He has said so! |
| 11/29/2022 | Genesis 1:1 is pretty cool. It tells us that God made the world, the universe, and everything from nothing. It is a verse that gives the lie to all the great philosophies of the modern age. Yet, if I had to choose what I thought was the most beautiful verse in Genesis, that first verse would be close, but not the one. Genesis 2:24 talks about the importance of marriage – that a man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife. It reminds us that marriage is to be between one man and one woman and should last for life. It is beautiful – but, to me, not the most beautiful. Genesis 9:13 is pretty special, where God sets His bow in the clouds as a sign to remind us that He will never again flood the Earth in a worldwide deluge. He has no obligation to limit Himself by covenant, yet He does so out of love for us, and He keeps those covenants out of love. Yet even this special verse is not the most beautiful. In my opinion, the most beautiful verse in Genesis is in chapter 6, and verse 8. “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” (Genesis 6:8) The verse begins with a “but” because we have just learned how evil men’s hearts are. Nevertheless, Noah was to be saved because of God’s favor; in other words, by grace. It is only by grace that we are saved – and that grace was extended to Noah as it is to all who repent and trust in Jesus. The most magnificent thing our Magnificent Creator God ever made was not a material thing but a spiritual thing – it was His Grace – and He made enough of it for all of His human creation!!! |
| 11/28/2022 | Imagine that the tide went out much farther than it had ever done before. Imagine that you lived in a world full of evil, but this day it seemed like something big was about to happen. One man and his family had been building an enormous vessel while warning people of the coming judgment of God. You had joined in the laughter with everyone else. But now, there was a rumbling like thunder, the sky had strangely darkened, and water was falling like it had never fallen before. The largest tsunami the world has ever seen was heading your way. Fanciful fiction? The Bible tells us that it is a real event from the history of the world. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. (Genesis 7:11-12) The detail of the timescale suggests a real event. The waters rose while rain continued for 40 days. The rain stopped, but the waters continued to rise due to geological upheaval for a further 50 days. Then the waters prevailed: for a further 60 days, making a total of 150 days. Gradually, the waters abated for 110 days and then receded from the land for 110 days. These are real events, and the Apostle Peter reminds us that it is the scoffers who remain deliberately ignorant of the facts that our Magnificent Creator God made, and later flooded, this world. What He gives He can take away. What He makes He can destroy. |
| 11/27/2022 | “And the LORD God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It’s behind your refrigerator and under your bed. It’s part of the air you breathe. While dust is common, it’s not commonplace at all. Much of the dust in our everyday lives is nothing more than tiny particles of skin, clothing, carpeting – just pieces of everyday life floating in the air. Studies of dust particles reveal that most dust is soil. However, a second common dust – even a thousand miles from the sea – is salt, driven into the wind by the waves. This salt helps form the clouds that bring us rain. The next most common forms of natural dust are volcanic eruptions and forest fires. Transatlantic winds pick up the dust of the Sahara and sweep it across the ocean where enough of it lands in Miami to sometimes give the rain a light pink color. Not only does your home have dust from all over the world, there’s probably also some from outer space. Ten thousand tons of disintegrating meteorites and comets rain down on the Earth every year. You can even identify some of this dust by running a magnet through the dust in a rain gutter. Most of the magnetic particles that stick to the magnet are probably from space. In addition, some dust is alive, made up of pollen, fungus spores and even dormant bacteria, hoping to land on a good place to grow. Dust reminds us that the world is smaller than we think and that it won’t last forever. Are you ready for the next world? All your preparations have been made by Jesus Christ our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 11/26/2022 | Revelation 21:15-17 says “The angel who talked to me held in his hand a gold measuring stick to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. When he measured it, he found it was a square, as wide as it was long. In fact, its length and width and height were each 1400 miles”. 1,400 is the cubic mileage of God’s eternal capital city in length, breadth, and height. Just in area coverage, it’s larger than India. But a city rising 1,400 miles into the sky? That calls for a huge planet—a supersized new earth, which our Magnificent Creator God can easily create!!! |
| 11/25/2022 | One of the fundamental lessons we learn from Scripture is that there is only one God. There are, however, a lot of false gods. In biblical times, these would often have been idols of wood, stone, or metal. But there are idols all around us today which demand our worship. These could be anything that people have put in the place of God. Some modern idols would, however, be recognizable to people of biblical times. These might be such objects as charms, horoscopes, or crystals. Sometimes, like the Children of Israel, Christians can be tempted by such idols. In Jeremiah 10, we read: Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. (Jeremiah 10:11-12) Our attitude to such idols needs to be to remind ourselves that these idols did not make the universe. Only God has the power to create, and the Bible reminds us that He created the whole universe in just six days about 6,000 years ago. Compared to God, the false gods and idols look so worthless. What is the test of whether or not they are true or false? The test is whether they created the heavens and the earth. Our Magnificent Creator God is the only true God, the God who really did make the heavens and the earth!!! |
| 11/24/2022 | The Ark was made of wood, so it had to be waterproofed. The most suitable type of waterproofing would be a hydrophobic substance, such as oil or grease. So, it was coated inside and out with pitch. But what actually is pitch? In modern parlance, this refers to an oil fraction. But here some people raise a problem. If pitch is an oil fraction, then do we not assume that oil was produced during the Flood? If that is so, then it could not have been around before the Flood. This objection actually misses the point. The Hebrew word translated as pitch in Genesis 6:14 is khafar. The only other places where the word pitch is used to describe a bituminous substance would be Exodus 2:3 and Isaiah 34:9, but in these latter two cases, a different Hebrew word (zepheth) is used. Khafar is only used to mean pitch in Genesis 6:14, but khafar appears in another 101 places in the Old Testament. In all those other places, it is translated with words such as appease, reconcile, or atonement. The word is used in the Pentateuch for the coverings of blood, which foreshadow the blood of our Savior. The altar was covered by a sin offering of blood. Noah and his family were waterproofed against the watery judgment of God, and we, who belong to Christ, are fireproofed against the judgment to come by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, which not only covers, but washes away all our sin. The Word of our Magnificent Creator God has meaning that we must study carefully so as to not miss the wonder of His works!!! |
| 11/23/2022 | The Flood began with two geophysical events – the bursting forth of Fountains of the Great Deep and the opening of the Windows of Heaven. But what could these events have actually looked like? Starting with the Fountains of the Great Deep, this would appear to be a reference to volcanic activity. We can envisage cracks opening up in deep points of the pre-Flood ocean. Possibly magma came through these rocks, but also, we expect that a lot of super-heated water would emerge, thrown at supersonic speed high into the atmosphere. In other words, these fountains would have been similar to the ocean floor springs that exist today, but on a larger and more violent scale. This would have been the main source of the overwhelming majority of the floodwaters which covered the Earth. And after the water had been thrown high into the atmosphere, it would have returned to the Earth as torrential rain, so this is probably what is meant by the Windows of Heaven – more correctly, the Floodgates of Heaven. There would not have been enough moisture in the pre-Flood atmosphere to produce the amount of floodwater required, whereas the mechanism suggested, called Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, flows from Scripture, and seems to fit scientific observations. We are humbled when we think of the amazing power of our Magnificent Creator God and of His creation and the truth of His word that He did everything exactly in the way that He said He would!!! |
| 11/22/2022 | Spider silk begins as a liquid protein made by silk glands on the spider’s abdomen. Spiders make many kinds of silk for different uses. As the liquid silk is forced through the spider’s spinnerets, it begins to dry. The spinnerets pull and stretch the silk, creating just the right kind of silk for the spider’s use. Though the result seems thin and weak to us, ounce for ounce, spider silk is stronger than steel. Web-building spiders make two types of silk for their traps. The basic structure of the web is made of strong, nonsticky silk. Then the spider adds a sticky, elastic silk to trap its prey. Some webs are irregular, others are flat and sheet-like, while still others are shaped like funnels. All of us have admired the beautiful orb web. However, spiders also have many other ways in which they use their silk. The ogre-faced spider makes a net that it throws around its intended victim. The European water spider builds its web underwater. It stores its air supply in the web. The lasso spider twirls a single strand of silk over its head. A tiny drop of sticky silk at the end of the lasso captures its prey when the lasso is thrown. Probably the most creative use of silk is by the young of some species. When they hatch, they produce long loops of silk that catch the wind and send them floating off to new places. The spider’s skill in producing and using silk had to come from Someone wiser and more clever than the spider. Clearly the spider has been well-equipped and instructed by its Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 11/21/2022 | The Cassini-Huygens Mission, which ended in 2017, was, by any stretch of the imagination, a remarkable human achievement. Launched on October 15, 1997, the craft was active for nearly 20 years before its final descent into the oblivion of Saturn’s gravity on September 15, 2017. Cassini-Huygens took seven years to reach Saturn. In order to save fuel, an extremely complicated orbit was calculated to use planetary gravitational fields to accelerate the craft enough for its long journey to Saturn. This involved two close approaches to Venus, one to the Earth, and another to Jupiter, which finally whipped the craft off in the right direction for the rendezvous with the ringed planet and its moons. The complexity of the calculations required to power the craft to Saturn relied on the predictability and measurability of gravitational forces elsewhere in the Solar System. Such confidence in calculations was only possible because these universal constants display the wisdom of God. NASA’s brilliant scientists did not assume that their work would be hindered by random evolutionary chance in the way that all these planets behaved. Yet, part of their mission was the vain search for the evolution of life on one of Saturn’s moons. Evolution-minded scientists often cannot see the irony or the inconsistency of such an approach – a reliance on divine design in an attempt to prove such design does not exist! Once again our Magnificent Creator God has blessed many people with intelligence and skill to navigate the vast universe He so carefully planned and built!!! |
| 11/20/2022 | The founders of modern science, on the whole, believed in the Creator. The methods they developed were based upon the truth that the creation is voluntary. This means that God was not confined to what we have later defined as “scientific laws.” God could make anything He wanted in any way He wanted. Science cannot be done from the philosopher’s easy chair. Scientists must go out into the field and study how nature works. When science follows this path, it is open to astonishing discoveries. One recent unexpected discovery was the hot water vents deep below the ocean’s surface. Where the earth’s crust has split apart, hot water gushes out. This water reaches temperatures hot enough to, say, cause a piece of paper to burst into flame. Only the tremendous pressure more than a mile below the waves keeps the water in liquid form. It was in this environment that scientists made an even more amazing discovery. They found bacteria that could live in the almost 700 degree water. These amazing creatures find the normal, sea level boiling point of water to be so cold they can barely survive. Scientists are still trying to learn how these creatures live at temperatures that would destroy the normal biochemistry of life. Each new discovery tells us a little more about the work of our wonderful Creator. That’s what science was originally intended to do. Keep that in mind when you hear someone say that belief in our Magnificent Creator God makes doing science impossible!!! |
| 11/19/2022 | It was first discovered in 1855, but many scientists debated its existence for another 50 years. Once its existence was finally proven to everyone’s satisfaction, it was another 50 years before science had any tools to begin studying it. Finally, in the late 1980s, scientists began to learn a little about the secrets of one of the tiniest, yet most amazing structures in the body. At the back of the eye, between the deepest layer of the retina and the cells beneath it, lies a tiny moat made up of about 10 drops of a mysterious fluid. The entire moat is thinner than a sheet of cellophane. It seems that the clear fluid in the moat serves the surrounding light-sensing tissues of the eye in place of blood, bringing in nutrients and carrying away waste. It also transports light-sensitive chemicals needed by the light-detecting cells in the eye. In addition, it seems to glue the retina in place. More than that, the moat is rich in a growth factor. This fact makes scientists believe that the gel may also be important to repairing injuries to the retina, keeping the cells of the retina young and active, as well as helping in the growth of new cells. As one researcher said, the more they study this tiny structure, the more unexpected abilities they find – something like a bottomless suitcase. Charles Darwin, who didn’t even know about the moat, was right when he said that it was impossible to believe that natural selection could have produced the eye. As Christians we believe that only our Magnificent Creator God could have produced the eye!!! |
| 11/18/2022 | “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” We’ve all heard this familiar saying. In the case of the sun’s fire, scientists expect to find not smoke but tiny particles called neutrinos. The problem is, most of those neutrinos are missing. It was once thought that the sun’s heat was produced as it’s powerful gravity caused it to collapse in on itself. But as the theory of evolution became popular, this theory fell out of favor. Those who promoted evolution knew that their theory was more believable if they said the sun was millions or billions of years old. However, if the sun’s heat came from gravity collapse, it could not possibly be that old. So when scientists learned about nuclear energy, they proposed the theory that the sun’s energy comes from nuclear forces. This would give them their billions of years. The problem is, the sun’s nuclear engine should be turning out a large number of neutrinos. Scientists find only about one-third to one-fourth of the neutrinos that should be there. This mystery is so troubling that scientists have changed their theories about how the sun produces its energy every year or two over the last 25 years! Some of them admit that they really don’t know how the sun produces its energy. The sun is a vital blessing to us. And here we see another blessing, for the sun also keeps us humble. Our Magnificent Creator God has so wonderfully created the sun that even our best scientific minds can’t figure out how it works!!! |
| 11/17/2022 | You may not think of plants as being super intelligent on any level since it appears that they just sort of sit in the soil and grow. However, there are many instances of plants that try to poison or repel a predator. Now we will see that the lima bean employs an even more sophisticated defense strategy that not only warns surrounding lima beans of the attack, but also calls in defenders. Anyone who has ever worked with plants is familiar with spider mites. There are many varieties, but one of the most dangerous to the lima bean is the two‑spotted spider mite. These mites inject their saliva into a plant’s tissues, dissolving them. One of the mites’ biggest enemies is a carnivorous mite that feeds on these two‑spotted mites. These carnivorous mites are small and travel wherever the winds carry them. When two‑spotted mites attack a lima bean, the plant sends out a special chemical signal. When this distress signal reaches surrounding lima beans, they, too, begin to send the signal even though they are not under attack. The signal carries several messages to different species. Spider mites not on the plant being attacked are repelled from the area. On the other hand, any carnivorous mites that drift into the area will stay to feed on the two-spotted spider mites. As a result, the lima bean defends itself by sending specific messages to three different species! The lima bean’s intelligent defense strategy is difficult for evolutionists to explain but it is easily accounted for by our Magnificent Creator God who cares about all His creatures!!! |
| 11/16/2022 | Scientists have long wondered how deep‑diving creatures such as the whale and the dolphin can dive so deeply on one breath. It takes a great deal of energy for a seal, for example, to dive 1,200 feet deep and then return to the surface. Scientists computed that one breath should not be able to provide enough oxygen to burn the muscular fuel necessary for such dives. In one attempt to learn how deep‑diving sea creatures do what seems to be impossible, researchers even built a robotic fish. Their studies of how the fish swam indicated that gliding would not conserve a deep‑diving creature’s energy. However, scientists have finally been able to attach video cameras to deep divers and have discovered their secrets. The cameras were designed to show scientists exactly how the animals moved. They found that these animals actually do save energy for their return to the surface by gliding into the depths. To their surprise, researchers saw that as the animals descend water pressure squeezes their bodies into a smaller volume, making them more dense. The pressure also flattens air sacs in their lungs, further helping the animal to descend. These effects help save oxygen reserves for hunting and the return to the surface. Scientists marveled at how clever the animals are. No one has even seen cleverness result from the chance forces that supposedly drive evolution. Intelligent design comes from an intelligent Designer, our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 11/15/2022 | The Bible speaks of bird calls as songs, as most of us do. However, evolutionary theory has led some scientists to say that we are merely assigning human meanings to the calls of birds. They say that the bird calls have nothing to do with real music. Ornithologists have known for some time that bird songs use the same musical scales as our music. Decades ago, it was noted that some of Beethoven’s work could be heard from the European blackbird. The music was the same as the opening rondo of Beethoven’s “Violin Concert in D, Opus 61.” Since these birds pass their songs from generation to generation, Beethoven could have gotten the lilting music from the forefathers of today’s European blackbird! The songs of some species, like the song sparrow, follow the form of a sonata, beginning with a strong theme, then the theme is musically played with, and for a finish, the original theme is then repeated. Mozart had a starling as a pet. Once, having heard Mozart play his “Piano Concerto in C Major,” the starling not only imitated it, but changed the sharps to flats! Mozart exclaimed, “That was beautiful!” When the starling died, Mozart held an elaborate funeral for it. Eight days later he wrote “A Musical Joke,” which contains the same elaborate structure found in starling song. Do birds make true music, as the Bible says? Contrary to what some evolutionists say, Beethoven and Mozart certainly thought they did. Our Magnificent Creator God had a specific reason for every piece of His creation – even the art of playing the spoons on The Grand Old Opry!!! |
| 11/14/2022 | The chempedak tree is found in Malaysia. It is closely related to jackfruits in the mulberry family. The chempedak tree that offers edible fruits that are about a foot long. Researchers studying the chempedak were surprised to discover that they bloom irregularly. One tree was watched by researchers for five years before it bloomed! While the flowers smell like watermelon, they offer no nectar to entice pollinating insects. Moreover, the insects that do pollinate the chempedak tree do not eat any of the pollen. What, then, attracts the two species of gall midges that pollinate the flowers? The answer: a fungus that attacks only the male flowers of the tree. The midges like to eat the fungus, so they crawl on the male flowers as they eat the fungus, picking up pollen. Then they go to the clumps of female flowers looking for more fungus, inadvertently pollinating them. This arrangement in which the tree depends entirely on a fungus to attract pollinators is unknown in any other species. This raises the question of how such an arrangement could have evolved. Without both the midges and the fungus, the first chempedak tree would have been the last. All three elements in this interrelated system had to have come into being at the same time. The chempedak tree bears witness to a rapid creation of the interdependent plant and insect world where living things had to wait, at most, mere days for the other creatures it depends on to come into existence, just as Genesis reports. Our Magnificent Creator God developed His Master Plan before He did anything else and it provided not only for the creation of everything but its survival as well!!! |
| 11/13/2022 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of our Magnificent Creator God and not mindless, natural accidents!!! |
| 11/12/2022 | For many, the existence of so much ice on Antarctica is a grave cause for concern, as they have been told that climate change will cause a lot of this ice to melt and cause the sea level to rise. The worry is that many of the world’s great cities, and many small island nations, could disappear as the Antarctic melts. So why did God make such a troublesome continent which could precipitate the end of the world? Remember that the topography of the world is not the way it was originally created. We have explained previously that there was likely just one main pre-Flood continent, which we call Rodinia. This continent split up during the Flood. The massive deposits of fossil fuels known to exist on the southernmost continent are evidence of pre-Flood forests, probably populated with animals. Every time ice breaks off from an Antarctic glacier, the media worry about flooding – yet God has promised not to flood the world again, nor to bring seasons to an end. Despite seeming to be a homogeneous repository for the 70% of the Earth’s fresh water, locked in as ice, there are considerable variations in climate between different parts of the continent. For every place where ice is melting and breaking up, there are parts where the ice cap gets thicker. Our Magnificent Creator God has all this in balance for His own purposes, and we can be sure He will keep all His promises!!! |
| 11/11/2022 | Humpbacks are among the largest whales in the world. A typical humpback weighs about 40 tons and begins its breach deep down in the ocean. Imagine the acceleration required to get this enormous animal out of the water and into the air. The whale leaves the water at an angle of 30° and a speed of 18 mph. Clearly, this monster uses a lot of energy in breaching, yet it is not unknown for the whale to repeat the exercise – the observed record being 130 leaps in 90 minutes! Why does it go to all this trouble? No one really knows. As with all such obscure phenomena, there are those who suggest that the whales are trying to “attract the girls”! Others suggest that the big splash achieved on re-entry rips some of the barnacles off the whale’s surface. There may be truth in either of these suggestions. But Wilson says that he cannot overlook the probability that the whale breaches simply because it gives God pleasure! Our Magnificent Creator God is a creative God, and the world He made is not for utility only, but also for beauty!!! |
| 11/10/2022 | Scientists have, for the first time, successfully communicated with honeybees in their own language! Scientists have for some time known how to interpret many of the elements of the bees’ so-called “waggle dance.” This dance is used by scouts to communicate the location of food sources to the food gatherers in the hive. A couple years ago researchers decided to see if they could confirm their understanding of bee communication. But how do you talk to a bee and get confirmation that she understood what you said? Scientists decided that the only way to do this was to build a robot bee through which they could communicate. The first attempts at building a robot bee acceptable to real bees did not work well. Early models were viciously attacked. Scientists finally perfected a computer-controlled robot bee that real honeybees accepted. These scientists describe honeybee language as elegant and precise. Yet they found they had learned enough bee language to communicate successfully a food source and its location to real bees. They also discovered that they have much more to learn about bee language. As a result, it may someday be possible for farmers to direct bees to crops that need pollination. Just as bees can best understand other bees, we humans can best understand other humans. That explains why, when our Magnificent Creator God wished to communicate with us, He became a human being. That human, Jesus Christ, taught us about God; and He also made peace with God for us, making possible the forgiveness of our sins!!! |
| 11/9/2022 | We have now gotten used to the idea that there are dinosaur fossils containing soft tissue. Our familiarity with such finds has begun to dull the edge of the surprising import of such finds. Whichever way you spin this, the presence of soft tissue is not consistent with evolutionary ages for the dinosaurs. Perhaps this sense of surprise, for the evolutionist, will be rekindled by the discovery of dinosaurs complete with skin, scales and pigments. One such dinosaur find is that of Borealopelta markmitchelli. This amazing specimen caused one expert to remark that it “might have been walking around a couple of weeks ago”. When the protein molecules of such organisms break down, they form secondary proteins called kerogens. These molecules have been found in this dinosaur. Although the exact lifespan of such molecules has not been fully researched, it is clear that they cannot last anywhere near as long as the required 112 million years – the date assigned to this dinosaur. Similarly, pigments like melanin have been found in the scales of the dinosaur. Experiments have suggested that the lifespan of melanin is only thousands of years. Yet, this dinosaur is not the only discovery in which such melanin has been found, even though there is no scientific mechanism by which such pigments could last the millions of years required. These dinosaur finds are troubling to evolutionists. But they are fully consistent with a biblical worldview, confirming as they do the Bible’s timescale for our Magnificent Creator God’s Creation and the Flood. |
| 11/8/2022 | There are a number of blurry, indistinct, cloudy-looking objects in the night sky which are not pinpoints of light as the stars are. One hundred ten of these are the so-called Messier objects, which were cataloged by one Charles Messier – a French astronomer who lived from 1730 through 1817. These are a mixture of objects. Some of them we would now call nebulae – quite literally, nebulous clouds of interstellar dust and gas. Examples of these are M8 – the Lagoon Nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius, and M42 – the famous Orion Nebula. Others are star clusters, such as The Pleiades, in Taurus – an object mentioned in the Bible, which is cataloged as M45. Still others are actually other galaxies, such as M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, or M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Why did Messier catalog such a wide variety of different objects without commenting on their differentiation? The answer is that he wasn’t actually interested in those objects. He cataloged them, rather, as a police officer catalogs data from a possible suspect in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. Messier was interested in comets – which also, from a distance, look like blurry objects. The difference is that comets, being Solar System objects, move from night to night, whereas his cataloged objects appear fixed relative to the stars. The Hebrew word for star includes what we call stars today and other objects, such as Messier’s objects. All were made by our Magnificent Creator God and declare His glory. All of God’s creation is magnificent in every way!!! |
| 11/7/2022 | What did God have in mind when He created the human male? The world around us offers many images of what it means to be a “real man.” The world offers us the breadwinner, the tough-guy and the workaholic’s unending push for success. Also, it’s becoming increasingly universal that it is the woman who holds the family together. We can be sure that none of these images capture what God had in mind. If we want to learn some practical lessons about what God intended a man to be, we need to begin with God’s original creation of the first man. The first job given to Adam, the first man, was an intellectual task – identifying and naming the animals. Jesus Christ taught us to call God “our Father.” However, we shouldn’t make the mistake of comparing Him to our imperfect human fathers. Human fathers need to learn from God. What kind of father is He? He’s tough. However, toughness does not mean hurling thunderbolts. True toughness is best shown when love persists despite rejection and disobedience. God never tired of patiently seeking Saul of Tarsus, His sworn enemy. However, while He is loving, God is not a wimp. He has established absolutes that we can depend on. He always keeps His Word. We can be thankful for that because when we look at ourselves we know that we have not been the men or women He intended us to be. His Word of grace in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ assures all who cling to Christ that our perfect and almighty Magnificent Creator God is truly our Father!!! |
| 11/6/2022 | While staying with some family members in Kentucky, I was delighted one dark evening to see little flashes of light in the air, low over the garden lawn. Although I was too far away to see the insects concerned, these must have been fireflies. Fireflies are not actually flies – they are beetles. Their light-producing organs are in their abdomens. Most species use these bioluminescent displays for courtship. The bioluminescence is caused by a type of luciferin molecule, commonly called firefly luciferin. The name has nothing to do with evil! It comes from the Latin word for light. Firefly luciferin reacts with oxygen, and the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, luciferase, as well as the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine triphosphate – the energy-giving molecule ATP. Luciferin first forms another highly tensed molecule called a dioxetane, which releases CO2 to form a ketone. The ketone is in a highly excited electronic state, so it “relaxes” back to normal state by releasing energy. This energy is at exactly the right frequency to be in the visible light range. The fireflies in Kentucky emitted yellow light. If one were an evolutionist, one would have to wonder – what would have been the evolutionary advantage for the beetle to produce luciferase if there was no luciferin, or vice versa? We have a lot more work to do to investigate the chemistry of the process, but we still marvel at the wonder of our Magnificent Creator God’s design for these insects and all of the rest of His Creation!!! |
| 11/5/2022 | The writer of Proverbs 30 was counting his blessings while pondering God’s diverse creation. Four little creatures brought awe to his heart as he considered their skill. First, he was amazed at the tiny ants, which hurry around in organized lines setting aside their food for winter. Second, rock badgers, who know how to craft homes in the mountain crags. Third, locusts, which appear at once to be organized and disorganized as they sweep through the sky. Fourth, spiders, whose ability to spin webs makes them among the world’s greatest engineers (verses 24-28). Perhaps you’re not very thankful for ants or spiders, but take a moment to watch them and ponder how such tiny creatures know how to do their daily work. Then turn your focus to aspects of God’s creation that bring you more delight. As you go about your day, take time to notice the flowers, fields, grass, clouds, birds, puppies, and sunsets and remember that it was our Magnificent Creator God who created this world of wonder, surrounded by galaxies of glory!!! |
| 11/4/2022 | The purpose of an advertising billboard would be to grab the attention of the passerby. One way of attracting the attention of prospective customers might be to use bright colors. Suppose that the more brightly colored paint was more expensive. The increased business would be mitigated against by a greater cost involved in getting the necessary paint or ink. This is the sort of situation faced by a flowering plant. The flowers are the organs of the plant used for reproduction. The plant needs some sort of mediator to transfer male pollen cells from one flower to the stamen of another. The mediator is a pollinator and would typically be an insect or occasionally a mammal or a bird. The flower has to attract the pollinator, who does not visit the plant out of the goodness of his heart. Therefore, the petals of the flower become advertising billboards. Different shades and brightness of hue will attract different insects. However, what is not often considered is the amount of energy expended by the plant to produce such a colorful display. Consider that, in the early supposed evolution of a flowering plant, the plant would have had to use up a lot of energy to attract a pollinator. What if it hadn’t worked? The weakened plant would have wasted energy without any reproductive advantage. That clearly would not have occurred. In fact, from whatever angle you examine this, there is no evolutionary mechanism for the brightness of flowers. Instead, this is a clear design feature, illustrating the greatness of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 11/3/2022 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109°23´ and an acute angle of 70°23´. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Creator. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder our Magnificent Creator God has given His creation so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness!!! |
| 11/2/2022 | Deserts are inhospitable places with little rain—blazingly hot by day and chillingly cold by night. Few plants can survive, but the rock morning glory can. It has large underground tubers resembling sweet potatoes that store water whenever it rains. In times of drought, it’s sustained by the water stored in its twenty or so underground reserves. Jeremiah 17:8 says of those who put their confidence in God: “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”. Our Magnificent Creator God’s Master Plan provides for the sustenance of His every creation!! |
| 11/1/2022 | A recent science article in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper suggested that grizzly bears may have dropped their carnivorous ways in favor of a life of eating berries. Apparently, the streams and rivers on Alaska’s Kodiak Island are replete with salmon. Normally, 75% of these salmon are killed by grizzlies, but in recent years, the salmon have remained untouched, while bears stay in the hills eating elderberries. This change in behavior, which is billed as a form of evolution, is said to have occurred because elderberries are said to be ripening earlier every year. The normal diet of the grizzly bear would involve eating salmon at the end of summer and early fall, followed by gorging on the high-energy berries in order to fatten up for the winter hibernation. But the berries are ripening early, so the bears are missing out on the salmon in order to consume high energy berries. The Telegraph’s article thinks that it knows the culprit for this situation, which it sees as problematic. Early berry ripening has been caused by our old friend climate change. Apparently, this will affect the ecosystems of the rivers. Bears do not consume the whole salmon. The discarded carcasses rot and enrich the soil in the riparian region. Worried scientists suggest that bears will have completely given up on salmon by 2070. There has, of course, been frequent warming and cooling of environments before. More to the point, the Bible reminds us that “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22). We owe all of what we have – whether weather, plant, or animal, to our Magnificent Creator God’s Master Plan that He perfected before time began!!! |
| 10/31/2022 | A new attempt is being made to undermine people’s trust in God’s word. Interest has recently been shown in a 100-page document in Latin, written by the fourth-century Italian bishop Fortunatianus of Aquileia. Dr. Hugh Houghton of the University of Bormingham has translated the work and reports that it provides an allegorical interpretation of the Gospels. Houghton says, “There’s been an assumption that [the Bible is] a literal record of truth… But for people teaching the Bible in the fourth century, it’s not the literal meaning which is important, it’s how it’s read allegorically.” Houghton’s claim is that, because the document dates back to the fourth century, it should carry more weight about methods of interpreting the Bible than, for example, the works of Augustine. But is the antiquity of the document any evidence for its authority? The answer to that question must be a resounding “No”. It should be a surprise to nobody that there were people in the post-apostolic church who were already casting doubt on the authenticity of New Testament books. After all, the first record we have of someone casting doubt on the authority of God’s word is recorded in the Bible itself, when the serpent, in Genesis 3, does exactly that. There are many scholars who have shown that many post-apostolic writers accepted the authority of the entire Bible, and the New Testament documents themselves are self-authenticating – such as Peter’s acknowledgment of the Scriptural authority of Paul’s letters in 2 Peter 3:16. Our Magnificent Creator God gave us His Word to be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path that we would always to be guided by His Holy Word!!! |
| 10/30/2022 | Solar Cycle 10 – a typical 11-year sunspot cycle, from late 1855 to 1867 – was one of the busiest ever observed for solar activity. British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington had noticed a great deal of activity on the surface of the Sun from August 28th, 1859. On the morning of Thursday, September 1st, he once again pointed his brass telescope at the Sun, and he hurriedly made dozens of rapid sketches of the projected images. Suddenly, he reported that he saw “two patches of intensely bright and white light”. He had just witnessed the largest ever recorded solar event – now named the Carrington Event. Within 18 hours, the Earth was experiencing massive Aurora displays – the northern lights seen at latitudes as far south as Cuba. More interesting was the effect on the telegraph systems. All around the world, telegraph systems failed, operators experienced shocks and telegraph papers caught fire. What would happen if a solar storm the size of the Carrington Event happened today? Earth is surrounded by communication satellites, and most countries of the world rely on computer networks and the Internet. All of these could be damaged or destroyed by another Carrington. The Carrington Event at least shows why God created a magnetic field around the Earth. The Aurora displays at least showed that Earth has some protection against such an unusual event. And no event is truly random! Nothing ever created by our Magnificent Creator God is by accident or chance!!! |
| 10/29/2022 | Previously we talked about the Perseverance Mars 2020 mission, which included a helicopter named Ingenuity. Another technology demonstration taken with Perseverance is an instrument for collecting oxygen. The atmosphere on Mars is very thin; its surface pressure is only 1% of Earth’s atmosphere. Of this tenuous Martian atmosphere, 95.3% is carbon dioxide, which is only a trace gas on Earth. There is 2.6% nitrogen and 1.9% argon, with trace amounts of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and noble gases. Despite the rarity of oxygen, NASA engineers believe that their equipment can extract oxygen in sufficient quantities to make human exploration of Mars possible. Which brings us to the subject of life. Previous missions – and indeed photographs – have provided evidence that there was once water on Mars. Even Perseverance’s landing site – the Jezero Crater – appears surrounded by dried water channels. But water and atmospheric carbon dioxide do not make life. Says one NASA scientist, “If we found a microbe that arose on the next planet over, if lightning struck twice in this one corner of the solar system, it would suggest that our whole universe could have life on lots and lots of planets and it’s not just us alone in the dark night.” But his “lightning” did not strike once. Chemicals in lifeforms are not produced by mixtures or even simple reactions. They contain codes and information which could only have been put there by our Magnificent Creator God of the Bible!!! |
| 10/28/2022 | Everybody loves pandas, don’t they? We must love them because we are trying to save them from extinction, with some success; pandas have been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable. Apparently, their habitat in China is expanding, so that the likelihood of those adorable black-and-white icons of world wildlife may not disappear after all. However, you might recall one British comedian poking ironic fun at the mission to save the pandas by saying that we could do without them. After all, he opined, they seem determined to commit species suicide, so why not just let them go where the dinosaurs and mammoths went? A Christian position is more logical – less sentimental, but more compassionate. If pandas had already gone extinct, then we could clearly live without them. However, given that humanity has a mandate from Genesis 1 of stewardship of the Earth and its resources, it is certainly admirable to attempt to preserve what we have in the way of panda populations. The concept of panda extinction is inconsistent for evolutionists. A hard-line evolutionist should want them to die out because, in the survival of the fittest stakes, pandas have proved themselves less fit. Yet most people, while holding evolutionary philosophy, would rather try to take steps to preserve the cuddly looking giants. It is only those of us taking a biblical worldview who can view the subject with any degree of rationality. Animals are only animals. When they die, their souls return to the ground. Yet, the survival of pandas has only occurred because of massive human effort – effort that is not wrong and can indeed be justified from Scripture. It was a mandate from our Magnificent Creator God that we should always tend the earth and all that He created for it!!! |
| 10/27/2022 | David Bowie sang about the Spiders from Mars, but by the time you read this, the sky above the Red Planet could be buzzing with helicopters; well, one helicopter at least. NASA’s Perseverance mission was launched successfully on July 30th, 2020 and was scheduled to land in the Jezero Crater on February 18th, 2021. We probably know much more about this landing site for a robotic spacecraft than we did about the Mare Tranquilitatis Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon in 1969. The surface of Mars has been extensively mapped by orbiting craft. Many landings have taken so-called rovers with them. Perseverance is another such rover and carries seven different sensing instruments. It will even collect a number of samples for returning to Earth, though the Perseverance mission itself will not return; NASA hopes that a mission in 2026 will be able to retrieve the samples. One very interesting extra feature of Perseverance is that it carries with it the very first aircraft to operate in another planet’s atmosphere. Ingenuity is a sort-of helicopter, or perhaps a drone, designed to be able to fly in the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Seven flights of this robotic drone will provide much new information. Unfortunately, the focus of the mission is, once again, the fruitless search for extraterrestrial life. But we will still follow the mission with interest because God made Mars, and what we find there will cause us to praise our Magnificent Creator God all the more!!! |
| 10/26/2022 | James says that “every good and perfect gift is from above…” Perhaps this is twisting Scripture a little by including coffee in this category. We have to confess – we love coffee. So we should be delighted to read on the Science Daily website that the intake of coffee could contribute to longer life! If that is so, can we be looking forward to living as long as Methuselah? It isn’t the purpose of this discussion to extol the virtues or otherwise of this honey-colored liquid. Just simply note that a recent study has linked drinking four cups of coffee a day with a long and healthy life. 337 participants were studied over a ten-year period and were found to have a 64% lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who never or almost never consumed coffee. All participants lived in Spain or other Mediterranean areas. The researchers noted that previous studies on coffee consumption had not been carried out around the Mediterranean. The study also notes that previous studies had sometimes shown that there was a deleterious effect to the over-consumption of coffee or other caffeinated drinks. There are, after all, many people who suggest that drinking coffee could be bad for one’s health. The fact that another study is now suggesting an opposite conclusion simply underlines how volatile the professional opinion of scientists can be. The idea of scientific consensus turns out to be a myth and not an argument of authority. Our only absolute authority is what our Magnificent Creator God says in His word!!! |
| 10/25/2022 | In 1 Kings 7:23, there is an unusual account of how Solomon had the sea of bronze made. We read that is was “ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference”. Many atheists and skeptics have used this verse to criticize the Bible. They suggest that the inaccuracy suggested by the dimensions given is inconsistent with a Book claiming to be without error. They suggest that a diameter of 10 cubits and circumference of 30 cubits is impossible, as the relationship between these two values is governed by a value called pi (π). Now, pi, the famous mathematical constant, is found by dividing the circumference of a circle by its diameter. So, if Solomon had made the sea ten cubits across, then surely the circumference would have to be about 31½ cubits. What the skeptics fail to notice is that verse 26 informs us that there was a rim, with a width of a handsbreadth. A cubit is about 18 inches, while a handsbreadth is 4 inches. So the circumference is 540 inches. The rim-to-rim distance is 180 inches, but we need to subtract two handsbreadths to find the diameter of the vessel, which will be 172 inches. 540 divided by 172 is 3.1395, which is extremely close to the recognized value of 3.1416, giving a tiny experimental error of just 0.07% – well within the accuracy of any measuring device used at the time. This little math lesson is, as expected, consistent with our presupposition of the Bible’s trustworthiness. Once again The Holy Inspired Word of our Magnificent Creator God proves to be true in even the tiniest, least significant details!!! |
| 10/24/2022 | You might have liked math when you were in high school. But one aspect of math was tedious. This was when special numbers had to be looked up in boring books called log tables. These books contained not only logarithms but also the trigonometric functions – sines, cosines and tangents. Today’s students simply press a button on their scientific calculators, but we had to look with painstaking concentration through page after page of figures until we had worked out the value required. A clay tablet, called Plimpton 322, was discovered in the early 1900s in the area where Babylon must have been. This mysterious tablet, with four columns and 15 rows of numbers, has remained an enigma until recently. Researchers at the University of New South Wales have discovered that the numbers are in base 60 rather than the base 10 that we use. In addition, they are trigonometric tables like those sine, cosine and tangent tables that we remember from our youth. It has been known for a very long time that the Babylonians used base 60. In fact this is the source of our idea that an hour contains 60 minutes, and a minute 60 seconds. Ancient civilizations were far from primitive. It is likely that the earliest post-Flood civilizations, such as Babylon, retained some of the pre-Flood knowledge passed down through the generations. No wonder their inhabitants wanted to keep central control of such knowledge, before God scattered the people across the face of the Earth. We should give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for being in control of all the sciences – even mathematics – and for the wonder of creation that we see through historic math documents such as Plimpton 322!!! |
| 10/23/2022 | The headline “Scientist Sees Planets with Very Large Telescope” might not excite the imagination until you realize that the Very Large Telescope, or VLT, is actually a thing! It is a huge reflecting telescope, built by the European Southern Observatory in the desert in Chile. It is actually comprised of four telescopes, each of which has a primary hyperbolic mirror about 27 feet across. The result is that the instrument can “see” objects millions of times fainter than those detected by the human eye. Recently, the VLT was pointed at a star rejoicing in the name TYC 8998-760-1, about 300 light years away. It was already known, from calculations, that the star had two planets orbiting it. So the VLT was able to take a magnificent photograph of the stellar system, clearly showing these planets. Both planets are gas giants. The one closer to the star is 14 times more massive than Jupiter, while the other is six times bigger. The planets are 160 and 320 times further from their star than the Earth is from the Sun, compared with just five and ten times the Earth-Sun distance for Jupiter and Saturn. Even though we may not understand why our Magnificent Creator God made all of these stars and planets a part of His Master Plan, we will someday in glory!!! |
| 10/22/2022 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by their Magnificent Creator God! |
| 10/21/2022 | You must have heard the evolutionary idea that dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid hitting the Earth about 66 million years ago – probably on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Recently, this idea has come under criticism from evolutionists as well as from creationists. Other models for the extinction of the dinosaurs have been explored. Recently, researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have been revisiting the idea of the asteroid strike and have suggested that dust and soot, flying into the air after the impact, would have caused about two years of darkness over the entire world. The researchers suggest that this would have shut down all the photosynthesis across the world, resulting in mass extinctions and reducing the global temperature. This darkness, therefore, would have caused the demise of the dinosaurs. The word “dinosaur” was originally coined to give a label to types of animals which do not really have much in common, other than the fact that they are extinct. It seems odd to spend so much time wondering how a class of animals became extinct, whose very nomenclature was only created to state that they were indeed extinct. Many animals have become extinct. In a biblical worldview, we can see that some animals, following the Flood, might have had difficulty adapting to new climatic conditions. In any case, it seems more logical to attribute the death of dinosaurs to climatic conditions following a known worldwide catastrophe (the Flood) rather than a similar change caused by the speculation about an unknown worldwide catastrophe – the years of Darkness. Put your faith into The Word of God and know that our Magnificent Creator God is the source of all that is and all that ever was!! |
| 10/20/2022 | From an early age, Charles Darwin’s mother, Sukey, took him to church. That is why so many people assume that Darwin’s background was Christian. But the church to which Sukey Darwin took her children was not just any church. It was a Unitarian Church. And the influence of this church, and its pastor, Rev. William Case, was not just for Sundays. Case operated a small grammar school in the manse, and Sukey sent the young Charles there. Unitarianism takes a strong doctrinal position on not taking doctrinal positions. Its name suggests not only a belief in the singularity of God, but an opposition to the biblical Trinitarian position. Unitarians deny that Jesus is God, even though the Bible says He is. Consequently, they also deny the authority and inspiration of Scripture, except in the vague sense of being “inspired” by any “uplifting” literature. Case’s influence on Darwin’s later life is undeniable. For example, Case’s nature trips to the local quarry instilled a lifelong love of natural history in the boy. It surely must also be that Darwin had no foundation of trusting God’s word from these early experiences – God’s word that reveals to us His triune character and the deity of Christ. Though we do not derive the doctrine of the Trinity from Genesis 1, we can see the doctrine clearly reflected in the Creation by our Magnificent Creator God, by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God!!! |
| 10/19/2022 | Three people went out to dig for rock. The rocks in their claim were rich in minerals, such as malachite – the principle ore of copper. Historically, copper has been used as an alloy, being mixed with tin to form bronze. Today, copper is used in the printed circuits of computers, cell phones and other electronic devices. Copper is relatively easy to extract from its ore, requiring not too much heating of the ore, with a reducing agent such as carbon. One morning, the three miners drove to their claim, as normal. They parked their car and walked a mile or so to their claim in order to dig for ore. Their mine was in the heart of the Cascade Range in the state of Washington, close to the volcano known as Mount St Helens. Donald and Natalie Parker, and their nephew Richard signed waivers at the edge of the “blue zone” in order to gain permission to the area, access to which was being restricted because of the possibility of an eruption. The next morning, Sunday May 18, 1980, the mountain blew and the Parkers’ cabin was destroyed by the blast. All three miners died of asphyxiation. Their car was thrown 60 feet and landed where it remains to this day as a macabre tourist sight. We do not know what tomorrow may bring. This is why the Bible reminds us that today is the day of salvation. It is important to get right with our Magnificent Creator God today. He has not only made the physical wonders of our world but the spiritual wonders as well such as His Master Plan Of Salvation!!! |
| 10/18/2022 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by our Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error. This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty!!! |
| 10/17/2022 | Many of us in the United States recently watched the total eclipse of the Sun in 2017. I was at my place of work in the state of Washington, where the eclipse was 98%. An eclipse happens when the Sun, Moon and Earth are perfectly lined up, with the Moon casting a shadow on to the Earth. You might think that such an arrangement would happen every month, but it does not because the Moon’s orbit is at an angle to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Nevertheless, total eclipses are not that rare and there is likely to be one somewhere in the world every couple of years. We are so used to seeing the Sun and the Moon that we forget some important but simple concepts. First, we forget that these objects are entirely different. The Sun produces its own light by nuclear fusion, but the Moon – a solid lump of rock – simply reflects sunlight. Also, we forget that the apparent size of these objects in the sky is the same. The Sun is many times bigger than the Moon but is also a lot farther away. The coincidence of their relative sizes means that the Moon can exactly fit over the Sun, enabling us to see phenomena such as the Sun’s promontories, looking like large flames. As Christians, we believe that this “coincidence” is actually a design feature. Eclipses in history can accurately be dated, enabling us to calculate the dates of many historical events. This is one of the reasons that our Magnificent Creator God has designed this spectacular phenomenon!!! |
| 10/16/2022 | We have all looked in wonder at the amazing transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. However, did you realize that a moth needs an entirely different kind of brain than a caterpillar? We can truly say that here we have an insect with two brains! In the caterpillar stage, the moth lumbers around in a body that is primarily designed for eating. Its brain must be able to command powerful jaws and a comparatively huge digestive system as well as the complexities of caterpillar locomotion. The world of the caterpillar is very different from the world of the moth. During metamorphosis the caterpillar completely dissolves and the moth is rebuilt from the liquid. The brain, for example, requires new nerve cells and new connections between brain cells, while some brain cells change function, migrate to new locations, or even die. The result is a brain that is 10 times the size of the caterpillar’s and ready to control flight. The moth’s primary purpose in life is to reproduce. So its new brain is able to generate the odors used by moths to identify and communicate with potential mates. It is also equipped to detect the scents of a potential mate. Only our almighty Magnificent Creator God could completely rebuild a caterpillar into a moth. Only He could rebuild and increase its brain ten-fold in only a week or two. Even more amazing is how He remakes people. Through the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ turns us from people who wish to escape Him to new creatures who love Him and find joy in Him!!! |
| 10/15/2022 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures!!! |
| 10/14/2022 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm! |
| 10/13/2022 | We want to avoid getting bacteria in our food, don’t we? Bacteria cause illness. Bacteria are bad. Yet, some of the world’s healthiest foods contain deliberately introduced bacteria. One such strain of bacteria is the Lactic Acid Bacterium (LAB). This is used in foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut. Brassicas, such as cabbage, often have low quantities of this bacterium. When sealed in a suitable fermentation jar with salt, the LAB can thrive. LAB is able to withstand high acidity and salinity, so it grows, even in a salty environment. One of the products of LAB’s metabolism is lactic acid. Most other bacteria cannot survive in either acid or salt, so the LAB begins to dominate, while the vast majority of other bacteria die. LAB itself is not harmful to humans, so, paradoxically, the good bacteria have effectively killed off all the bad bacteria, providing a healthy, long-lasting food. When God finished making the world at the end of day six of creation, He looked at all that He had made and declared it to be very good. This must have included bacteria. Since Adam’s sin, many bacteria have mutated (though not evolved, as they have not gained new genetic information) into harmful organisms. Perhaps originally, all bacteria were created to be as useful as LAB in that original perfect world that our Magnificent Creator God gave us and that we so sinfully polluted. |
| 10/12/2022 | “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” One of the most common arguments against a literal six-day creation is that the structure of the days is a literary device, called the Framework Hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests an almost poetic pattern to the days, which they claim demonstrates that the days are not meant to be taken literally. On day one, God made the universe. On day two, He made the seas and atmosphere, and on day three He made the land, with its plants. Then on day four, He filled the universe, day five filled the sea and atmosphere, and day six filled the land. So there are three days of creating ex nihilo and three days of filling those creations. Again, the advocates of this hypothesis maintain that this pattern shows that Genesis 1 is allegorical literature, proclaiming the truth of God as Creator, but does not give a historical account. A quick answer to this point is that if there is a real pattern of two sets of three days, this does not prove that the days are not literal. God is a God of order. However, their neat pattern breaks down. Day one is not actually the parallel to day four – day two is. How so? On day two, God created the firmament, and the firmament refers not merely to the atmosphere but the entirety of space. A better suggestion is to take our Magnificent Creator God at His word, that He created everything exactly how He said He did!!! |
| 10/11/2022 | It must have been a very exciting meeting of the Geological Society of London in December 1912. Charles Dawson was presenting a paper concerning a skull that he said had been found at a gravel pit in Sussex, England. The skull appeared to be half human half ape. The prevailing opinion of the time, as it is today, was that apes and humans had a common ancestor from which they had all evolved. Dawson’s colleague, Arthur Smith Woodward, claimed at the same meeting that the find was that of the fabled missing link between apes and humans. Thus began the legend of Piltdown Man. The gravel pits at Piltdown, Sussex, yielded a number of finds along with the skull. These finds in total were sufficient to convince the scientific establishment of the truth of the find. But in 1953, an extensive investigation of the skull indicated that the cranium was that of a human who had died about 600 years ago while the jaw was that of an orangutan. Tests revealed that these fragments had been artificially aged with various chemicals. Today, Piltdown Man is the textbook example of a scientific fraud. However, we should remember that the skull was considered to be genuine for over 40 years. How many of today’s evolutionary “proofs” will turn out not to be what they appear? Throughout all this, our Magnificent Creator God’s word remains the same, and remains true!!! |
| 10/10/2022 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was the Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language to praise our Magnificent Creator God and Savior and to tell others who He is and what He has done! |
| 10/9/2022 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! The Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health! |
| 10/8/2022 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by the Creator allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following Our Magnificent Creator God’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own! |
| 10/7/2022 | We know that Noah did not have to fit two of every species of animal on the Ark. The Ark sheltered two of every kind of land and flying vertebrate, not two of every species. For example, modern species like lions and tigers would have developed from the pair from the cat family that were on the Ark. Over time, different species of cats have developed from this pair. It is easy to see how this happened. Environmental conditions favor certain genes over others, so that these features are selected in the offspring. A simplistic example is that creatures with longer hair or fur have developed in colder areas of the world. This has involved no new genetic information; there has simply been selection from existing genetic information. But why did God make this speciation possible? Our Magnificent Creator God knew the different conditions that would arise in different parts of the world!!! Because Scripture shows us that Our Magnificent Creator God actively sustains life, it is possible that He included this ability to diversify in creatures in order to help their offspring to survive in radically different conditions – especially the vastly changed conditions in the aftermath of the Flood. |
| 10/6/2022 | We have long known that the community within a honeybee hive divides the labor among specialized workers. There are scouts who search for food. Nurses tend the young. Some bees specialized in cleaning. There are even undertaker bees who remove and dispose of dead members of the hive. Scientists have now discovered that honeybee colonies also have brigades of specialized “soldiers.” These bees often seem to be sitting around, not doing much. In fact, they have only one duty—attack large intruders. It appears that these bees are fed and cared for by the hive members while they wait for the alarm. Should a raccoon, bear or human threaten the hive, thousands of soldier bees swarm around the enemy and sting. Soldiers have been well-known members of ant and termite colonies. However, up to now, they have never been confirmed in honeybee hives. The universal need for soldiers for protection among social insects reminds us that some things are universal in this world. These soldiers are not responsible for a bear’s attack on the hive. Nor are human soldiers who follow just war principles responsible for human war. Humanity’s greed and lack of love for others cannot be abolished by getting rid of armies. Rather, greed, theft and the need for protection remind us that we are not what God intended us to be. The solution lies not in denying reality, but in returning to our Magnificent Creator God through the forgiveness of our sins as made possible by Jesus Christ!!! |
| 10/5/2022 | How many different scents do you think your nose is able to smell? The answer is about 10,000. How does your nose tell the difference between a rose and a skunk? Until only recently, scientists really weren’t sure. Now we know that humans and mammals detect smells by using at least 1,000 different genes. These genes are located in every cell in your body, but they are active only in your nose. This discovery, say scientists, gives them their first insight into how smell works. Before this, said one scientist, “We had almost no knowledge of the olfactory system and this really opens up the molecular study of smell in a very fascinating way.” They say that each of the different genes seems designed to respond to a small group of odors. As each group of genes does its part, the entire system is able to recognize everything we can smell. These genes pass signals from the nerve cells in the nose to a small region of the brain called the olfactory bulb. Now that smell genes are identified, researchers say they can begin to understand how odors are detected and how the brain interprets those signals. Our sense of smell relies on a very elegant and sophisticated system. Imagine, 1,000 genes lie at the heart of that system. Each one of those genes is information—a programmed code that is designed to make sense of what we smell. Information, programming and decoding are all terms that assume that we have a highly intelligent Magnificent Creator God who designed our sense of smell!!! |
| 10/4/2022 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, the Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. |
| 10/3/2022 | Carbon dioxide is a wonderful gas. It occurs in the atmosphere at an average concentration of 404 parts per million by volume (ppm). Plants need carbon dioxide to grow. This is the principle source from which plants derive the carbon compounds that they require. Green plants use chlorophyll to catalyze a reaction between carbon dioxide and water vapor that produces sugars and also some free oxygen. Greater concentrations of carbon dioxide will cause faster growth in plants. For example, large greenhouses in Britain used to pump in extra carbon dioxide to help tomato plants grow. The optimum concentration of carbon dioxide for plant growth is 2,000 ppm – 5 times greater than normal concentrations. Yet, climate change advocates claim that even the 400 ppm that we have is too high. So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The IPCC has determined that human-generated carbon dioxide – generated by industrial processes – is causing the Earth to get warmer. That there is a continuous increase in global temperature is by no means certain. Nevertheless, 20th century data does indeed suggest a correlation between carbon dioxide concentration and average global temperature. Could this be a case of cause and effect? Increase in concentration of carbon dioxide actually follows temperature rises rather than the reverse. If there is any cause and effect, it would appear that it is the temperature rises which causes the increase in carbon dioxide – possibly by warmer oceans dissolving less CO2. Perhaps it is time to celebrate rather than denigrate this strange and wonderful gas that our Magnificent Creator God designed for our benefit!!! |
| 10/2/2022 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Magnificent Creator God. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Put your brain together with the Word of God today! |
| 10/1/2022 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures designed themselves but that it was our Magnificent Creator God Himself!!! |
| 9/30/2022 | Gold must be one of the most remarkable elements in the Periodic Table. Its chemical symbol is Au, its atomic number is 79, and its atomic mass is 196.967. It is a lustrous, yellow-colored metal, and is almost chemically inert. It is this lack of chemistry, coupled with its rarity, that gives it its value. Gold is almost completely unreactive to the sort of agents that normally corrode metals, such as water or acids. It will, however, react with aqua regia – a blend of nitric and hydrochloric acids. Because of this unreactivity, gold is found as a native metal, not as a compound or ore. Most gold that is mined is stored as bullion, but its attractiveness and monetary value make it useful in jewelry. Because gold has such a large atom, it has a great many electron orbitals. The outer orbitals are very large for atoms, so an electron in the 5d orbital can reach speeds approaching the speed of light. The transition of an electron from the 5d to 6s orbital requires a photon of energy. However, by analogy with the transition from 4d to 5s in silver, this ought not to alter the basic silver color of the metal. But the speed of the 5d orbital is such that there is a relativistic effect, causing this transition to absorb a photon in the blue range of the visible spectrum. With blue light thus absorbed, gold appears, well, gold-colored! I find it fascinating that, when looking at my gold wedding ring, I am seeing Einstein’s theory of relativity in action. Gold is a metal fit for a king. That is why the Wise Men brought some to the child Jesus. If this description of the intricate makeup of gold is confusing and hard to understand just remember that gold is only one tiny element of this universe that our Magnificent Creator God has made!!! |
| 9/29/2022 | Coldwater Lake in Washington State looks so pretty, nestled between the mountains. This scene of tranquility is very popular among the fishing community. A better view of Coldwater Lake can be had by climbing the steep trail up to Coldwater Ridge. As you reach the top, you look back at the magnificent views of the Mount St Helens with its gaping crater, forever marred by having lost such a large portion of itself in the violent eruption of May 1980. In the other direction, you see the lake, which did not even exist before the eruption. The devastation caused by the volcano blocked Coldwater Creek so that the valley filled with water. So you keep walking along the ridge, and you espy a different sort of devastation. Huge pieces of rusting machinery can be seen. This machinery was there to aid with logging processes because this ridge used to be covered with forest before the eruption. The blast from the volcano had a speed of up to 350 mph as it hit the ridge, knocking down the trees and sending the logging machinery into a spin so that it landed in its current position. If the eruption had occurred on the Monday or the Saturday, one can imagine that this machinery would have been operated by many loggers, causing far more deaths than actually occurred on that Sunday morning. Out of that violence has come the tranquility of the lake scenery, just as out of the violence of the worldwide Flood, God brought a message of hope and mercy to a world reborn. We thank our Magnificent Creator God for the beauty of His creation and the way He can bring beauty out of brokenness!!! |
| 9/28/2022 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/27/2022 | For centuries, Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that He had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord – our Magnificent Creator God – is the beginning of all wisdom!!! |
| 9/26/2022 | A family of fish that live in the depths of the sea actually go fishing—pole, dangling bait, and all. This is only natural, since they, like people who go fishing, like to eat fish. This group of fish is collectively called the angler fish. The front dorsal spine in the female angler is located on her head. It is much longer than any of the other dorsal fins and has a fleshy bait on the end. When hungry, she sits very still and dangles the bait in front of her mouth. It doesn’t take long before something swims up to investigate this bait as its possible lunch. But before it can think about taking a sample, the angler has turned the tables and eaten her own lunch. Of course this system wouldn’t work very well in the pitch darkness one mile below the surface of the ocean without one other special provision. Like many other fish at such depths, the angler is able to generate her own light. In her case, only the bait lights up, so she stays invisible to her victims. The chemical method she uses to create the light is nearly 100% efficient! In His imaginative creativity, God was pleased to place creatures a mile below the surface of the sea. Yet in His mercy He has provided them with everything they need to make their living there. Likewise, you may not know why God has placed you into a particular situation right now. If He so cares for the creatures a mile below the waves, how much more does He care for You. And He has even included a light for you in His Son Jesus Christ! How wonderful is our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/25/2022 | A revolutionary design in metal-cutting blades is changing the metal-working industry. These blades don’t cut like a knife. Instead, the blade is fixed in one position while the metal to be shaped spins on a lathe. This new-style blade stays sharp six times longer than the old blade design. And where titanium used to make the old-style cutting blades dull almost the second they were used, the new blades last up to 30 minutes. This wonderful new blade was developed by two engineers who got the original idea from a rat. You see, rats’ teeth always have a sharp edge. Engineers learned that this is because their teeth are hard on one side and soft on the other. So as they wear, they always keep a sharp edge. Using this principle for metal-cutting has lowered costs and increased productivity, since the blades don’t have to be changed as often. Beginning in Job 39 God humbles Job with several chapters of questions about the wise designs found in the animal kingdom. God’s message is, “Job, if you think you’re so smart, who created all of this with such wisdom?” Even rats’ teeth are created with such wisdom that, once we learned the principle, our technology was greatly improved. Our Magnificent Creator God left nothing out of His creation that would help us live and learn in this magnificent world He made just for us!!! |
| 9/24/2022 | Evolutionary naturalism paints the picture of life as if it were a haphazard series of accidents that just barely resulted in a range of living things that just manage to survive. This fanciful picture destroys our sense of wonder over the sophisticated engineering designs in nature. Consider the mystery of flight, for example. Some evolutionists suggest that perhaps birds are descended from lizards that fell out of trees a lot. Other evolutionists say that birds came from lizards who grew wings—not for flight, but to chase down and catch insects. Yet, they have little to say about the fact that we humans have come by most of our sophisticated knowledge about flight from studying the birds. Then there is the problem, for the evolutionist, of how flight accidentally evolved so many times for so many creatures. Scientists studying the dragonfly are learning even more secrets of flight. Our best high-performance aircraft can barely lift themselves off the ground. However, the dragonfly can lift 15 times his own weight into the air. Scientists have learned that this is because the dragonfly’s wings are designed to create little whirlwinds over their top surfaces. These whirlwinds are the secret to creating incredible lifting power. Ways are now being planned to apply this secret to new aircraft designs. The engineering excellence found in nature and from which we have learned so much even in this day of interplanetary probes, is not witness to a mindless process of evolution, but to a wise and mindful and Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/23/2022 | It seems like science fiction to suggest that if someone typed your name into a computer, misspelling your name, the computer would find it and correct it. Yet the genetic code within each of your cells is an even more sophisticated information storage and transmission system. Not only does your genetic code store far more information in a microscopic space than our largest computers can, it has a built-in error correction system. Scientists have found a number of key enzymes in the cell that have just one job—find and correct errors in the genetic code. Those errors can creep in because of radiation, chemicals, or other reasons. These enzymes faithfully correct any errors, preventing mutations. But these are the very ones scientists thought could cause evolution—before they discovered this process. One scientist who studied these enzymes said science has no explanation for how this process could have evolved naturally. Scientists also say they don’t know how life could have continued without this genetic proofreading and correction. Only our Magnificent Creator God could have been wise enough to design an information system that can correct errors within itself. Even we human beings have not figured out how to do this with our simplest computers. Asking us to believe that blind chance and natural law could have done it certainly strains the credibility of science!!! |
| 9/22/2022 | Why did the Wise Men bring myrrh as a gift for Jesus, along with their gifts of frankincense and gold? This is an interesting question, and many people have pondered the meanings of all the gifts given to Jesus, but I think it is unlikely that we can give a definitive answer. Myrrh is a resin from the bark of certain varieties of the commiphora tree. When the bark splits (or is deliberately tapped), a fluid is exuded. This hardens in the air into lumps, called tears. The solid tears are reddish or golden brown in color. They are sweet-smelling but bitter to the taste. When consumed, myrrh has a stimulant effect. It is also clear from the Old Testament that myrrh had value. When Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites by his brothers, that group of travelers was on their way to Egypt “with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh” (Genesis 37:25). Later, when Jacob was sending his sons to Egypt for food (where they would unknowingly meet Joseph again), he urged them to take a number of items of value, including myrrh. In John 19:39, Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes with him to Jesus’ grave. Its aromatic properties presumably would make it ideal as an embalming material. Therefore, it could be said that myrrh speaks of death. Perhaps the Wise Men were being prophetic, when they brought Jesus gold, for His kingship, frankincense to represent prayers, because Jesus was and is God, and myrrh to represent the fact that He was to die to cleanse repentant sinners of their sins. We praise You, Magnificent Creator God, because You left nothing to chance. You gave us Your Son, Jesus, to be the propitiation for our sins!!! |
| 9/21/2022 | Late at night, in hundreds of thousands of homes around the country, people are watching a bewildering array of monster movies. In these films, shadowy and not-so-shadowy monsters attack, possess or inhabit their victims. These stories are make-believe. However, in our real world, there is a fungus that does all these things. These fungi grow in and on the bodies of insects. They begin their work when a single fungus spore lands on the body of an insect. The spore germinates by growing thread-like filaments through a weak spot or some other entry point in the insect’s outer shell. Once inside the insect, these thread-like filaments grow into the insect’s nervous system. Scientists have been amazed by the apparent fact that the fungus then seems to take over the insect, actually controlling its movements. It seems that the fungus directs its victim to climb a convenient plant to a height that will make the next generation of spores likely to land on another unsuspecting insect. It is there that the insect dies and the fungus produces its spores. To the evolutionist, the ability of such a so-called “low” form of life to possess and control a more evolved form of life is totally without explanation. To those of us who believe in creation, intelligence is not a matter of evolution. Intelligence is the gift of a Creator. Only He has all intelligence and wisdom. There are no limits to His creativity as He provides His creatures with ways to proclaim Himself as their Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/20/2022 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen, the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. Our Magnificent Creator God has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. |
| 9/19/2022 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workmanship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation!!! |
| 9/18/2022 | Roman Vishniac is a renowned photographer of microscopic scenes. One of his favorite subjects is one of the so-called simplest forms of life. This “simple” life, the protozoan, is supposedly the ancestor of all living things. However, Vishniac has noted that the protozoan is neither simple nor archaic in character. This creature carries out all the functions of life that we require millions of cells to sustain—all within a single cell. There is a parallel in technology. The first adding machines were large and heavy contraptions. As these mechanical adding machines became smaller, they had to be more cleverly designed because they were smaller. The first electronic calculators were even smaller and lighter than their mechanical brothers. But they were still much larger and simpler than calculators today. As calculators have decreased in size, they have had to be more cleverly designed because they are smaller. Vishniac has learned that the so-called “simple” one-celled creatures are not simple at all. This is because they must carry out the business of life within the limits of their small size. This has not swayed him from evolution. However, this fact has convinced him that current theories are wrong. You see, evolution is in trouble if there are no “simple” forms of life. We believe that this clear evidence that there are no simple forms of life—evidence powerful enough to sway the experts—supports the Bible’s claim that all forms of life were created in finished form by a wise and Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/17/2022 | Have you ever watched ducks out on an icy lake paddling around in the near-freezing water. They will spend much of the day in that one spot with the temperature well below freezing, and yet the cold doesn’t seem to bother them. Perhaps on shore there are some sparrows hopping around in the snow. One wonders: why don’t birds need shoes and socks? If you or I ran around with bare feet and legs when the temperature was below freezing, it would not be very long before we had a good case of frostbite. We could even lose so much body heat that our very lives would be threatened. Birds have a network of arteries that all blood going into their legs must enter. These arteries are interwoven with the veins returning from the foot. When the blood going to the foot enters this structure, called a “wonder net,” its temperature is 106° F. The blood returning from the foot at the same time is only 37°F. The warm blood passing through the net reheats the cold blood coming from the foot before it enters the body. The result is that the bird loses very little body heat. So the blood going into the foot never becomes dangerously cold in normal winter weather. The wisdom of this design is obvious. Could birds have survived having their feet frozen off before they learned to evolve this special arrangement? Our only conclusion can be that there is a Magnificent Creator God who cares for all of His creation, including you and me!!! |
| 9/16/2022 | We are beginning to discover more about how Neanderthal people were not primitive subhuman cavemen, as popular-style evolutionary documentaries show. Instead, they were actually fully human – and the evidence for this is so conclusive that even serious evolutionists accept the fact today. It appears that Neanderthals cooked. They didn’t just eat raw or burnt meat. It appears that food remains were seasoned with herbs. They also used nuts and legumes, among other plant-based edibles. Perhaps they were familiar with the Keto Diet! Those interested in natural remedies often recommend using certain tree barks as an infusion or just chewed, as a painkiller. This is because such barks – I use willow bark – are a source of salicylic acid, which is closely related to aspirin. It has even been found that Neanderthals consumed the mold penicillium, which we now know produces the well-known antibiotic penicillin. Their clothing included furs, required to combat European conditions during the post-Flood Ice Age. But they also seemed to wear pendants and other jewelry. An excellent, recent article in Creation magazine by Robert Carter and Lita Cosner, gives links to scientific papers on these and other civilizing traits attributed to Neanderthals. Though the authors are not Bible-believing Christians, their article reminds us that Neanderthals, being human, were descended from Adam through Noah, and made by our Magnificent Creator God just as we are! |
| 9/15/2022 | Think of the Arctic and you probably think about polar bears. Those magnificent, big, white carnivores are probably pictured in your mind standing on snow and ice, where they can be difficult to see. The Arctic is the realm of the bear, and this is reflected in its name. The word “Arctic” is derived from the Greek word arktos, meaning bear. There are layers of meaning here. Certainly, the Arctic is home to the polar bear, but also the constellation Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, contains the star Polaris, which is the Pole Star, being directly above the North Pole, so if you were traveling “towards the Bear”, or Bearwards, you would be traveling North. Perhaps the most iconic pictures of polar bears published have been those showing one or two bears clinging precariously to tiny icebergs barely able to support them. The implication of such images is that the habitat of the bears is disappearing. What would be the culprit that is melting the ice? Presumably, it would be our old friend Climate Change. So what would a bear do if the ice under its feet melted away? I guess it would have to swim! Fortunately, polar bears are strong swimmers. Some bears have been tracked swimming up to ten days. Contrary to popular opinion, recent research has shown that many polar bear populations increased during times of receding ice. In the last couple of years, ice sheets have expanded again. Climate Change Alarmists notwithstanding, conditions continue to underline that “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” Our Magnificent Creator God’s perfect Master Plan covers all events having to do with changes in nature and how all humans and animals will be able to cope!!! |
| 9/14/2022 | When we compare ourselves with many of the other living things on this Earth, our abilities are not very impressive. A camel can carry 1,000 pounds 30 miles through the desert every day. As a human being, I become tired even thinking about walking 30 miles with empty pockets. The ostrich can run at 30 miles per hour, faster than my car might go during rush hour. The Indian swift can fly at more than 100 miles per hour. The elephant’s trunk has 40,000 muscles. This is 70 times the number of muscles in your entire body. Yet, his trunk can bulldoze a tree or pick up a pin. Many of us can’t do either one on the first try. The flea can jump 350 times its own length, a total of 13 inches. This is equivalent to our jumping 2,000 feet into the air. Most of us can’t jump more than two feet off the ground. As it works out, 13 inches is just about right if you are looking for a nice warm dog on which to raise a family. A tiny insect called the midge beats its wings an amazing 133,000 times per minute. That’s a hundred times faster than you can blink your eye. Humans can use their superior intellect to build the machines they need. With those machines, they can outdo any one of these creatures. But God simply made a gift to the animals of the specialized abilities they needed. God expects us to follow His example and design and build what we need. If we look carefully, we will see that our Magnificent Creator God has given us all the materials and all the ideas we need within the creation. No one can say that He does not care what we do with our lives on Earth!!! |
| 9/13/2022 | Have you ever thought what a strange material water actually is? A water molecule comprises of three atoms – two hydrogens and one oxygen. Oxygen is an element in Group VI of the Periodic Table; Group VI also contains the elements sulfur, selenium, and tellurium, in increasing order of size (oxygen is the smallest. Hydrogen can also form compounds with these elements: H2S, H2Se, H2Te. These have the boiling points -60.7, -41.5, and -2.2deg Celcius. Therefore, all these compounds are gases at room temperature. If we were following the size of the Group VI atom only, then water should have a boiling point considerably lower than that of H2S. But it doesn’t. In fact, the boiling point of water is higher than all those other compounds, at 100 deg C (or 212 deg F). This, of course, is not the only anomalous property of water. The solid form of water – ice – floats on liquid water. So what, you might say. Well, the solid form of every other liquid there is always sinks in its liquid. If you have ever allowed molten candle wax to cool down, for example, you will notice it freezes from the bottom up. Nearly all liquids behave that way – except water! In short, the most common liquid in the world – the one that we require most for life – behaves like no other liquid. It is almost as if it were specially designed! Our Magnificent Creator God designed the Earth – including water – for us to inhabit!!! |
| 9/12/2022 | You have 30,000,000,000,000 individual cells in your body. That’s thirty trillion, and you have about two hundred different types of cells, including red blood cells, skin cells, nerve cells (neurons), and fat cells. Each type of cell performs a vital role in keeping your body healthy. As amazing as it seems, the average human body makes between two and three million new red blood cells every second. Oh, how we want each of our thirty trillion cells to be devoted to Jesus. We’re to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. As amazing as our incredibly-designed bodies are, we also have minds, personalities, and spirits. And we have gifts, talents, abilities, and strengths. The Lord gave you the wonderful workmanship of YOU so you could serve Him. Today, present your body to Him as a living sacrifice and let your life be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which happens as you meditate on His Word. Let Him be Lord of all there is of you. We are more than the chemicals that form our body. We are a special creation of God. Man is our Magnificent Creator God’s masterpiece—His workmanship, the crown of creation! |
| 9/11/2022 | It comes as quite a surprise to discover that the word locust does not actually indicate any separate species. Locusts are really just grasshoppers, but the term refers to their well-known swarming behavior. Under normal conditions, locusts are solitary insects. In normal times, they cause little or no problem to agriculture. But sometimes, conditions are not normal. After times of drought, the locusts seem to produce far more nymphs than would be normal. These then begin to swarm as the insects suddenly become gregarious. These swarms of locusts cause terrible problems for agriculture. In swarming conditions, the insects turn to eating crops and can devastate whole fields in short order. The transformation seems to be caused by increased body concentrations of serotonin, and this, in turn, is produced when there are multiple touches of the hind legs by other locusts, caused by overcrowding. Towards the end of 2019 and into 2020, large swarms of locusts affected parts of Africa and Asia, and these were so large that they brought to mind the plague of locusts in Egypt, mentioned in Exodus. For these reasons, locusts were, in the Bible, a symbol of destruction. In Joel 2:25, we read: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25). The destruction caused is to be reversed by the blessing and favor of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/10/2022 | If you had painful skin, one of the last things you would apply to it would be hot peppers. Not only do hot peppers burn the mouth, some can even blister the skin. Yet in South America, ground hot peppers have been used for centuries to help relieve pain. Scientists have discovered the active ingredient in peppers that relieves skin pain. This substance blocks the pain signals that come from the nerves just under the surface of the skin. The “hot pepper” sauce for skin not only causes no pain, it relieves pain that doesn’t respond to any other treatment. It’s available in creams and ointments that, tests show, relieve pain in two out of three people. Conventional wisdom says that medicines that are found in natural plants were discovered by accident. Someone might accidentally discover a relationship between a person’s having eaten a certain plant and then getting well. They would try the same plants on others with the same disease. If they found that there were more cures, the plant would be remembered as a folk medicine. The “hot pepper” pain reliever for skin tells us that there’s a problem with this theory. People who have a painful skin condition are not likely to apply a pepper sauce. Doing that would be expected to make their skin more painful and cause it to blister. However, it’s possible that our Magnificent Creator God originally gave humans some knowledge of the cures for our ills – cures that He wisely built into creation! |
| 9/9/2022 | Luke 11:49-51 “Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.” Jesus described Abel as a prophet. He referred to all the prophets who had been killed, “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah” (Luke 11:51). Prophecy refers to that forth telling, which comes from the Holy Spirit. The words of the prophet are the words of God. Prophecy can sometimes, though not always, be predictive. However, although Cain had a few things to say in conversation with God, there is no recording of any words of Abel at all, let alone any words of prophecy. So what was the prophecy of Abel? Abel was the world’s first murder victim. If you accept the early chapters of Genesis to be historically true – which you should – then there had been no previous human death. If evolution were true, then there would have been previous deaths, so Abel’s death was nothing significant. In a word, the death of Abel is only significant if it really was the very first human death. God said to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” The prophecy of Abel was his shed blood. His blood poured out onto the ground points to the much more important blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to be poured out on the ground for our sins. In Hebrews 12:24, we read, “You have come… to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Our Magnificent Creator God not only made everything perfect He gave the most perfect thing He owned – His life – for every one of us on the cross of Calvary!!! |
| 9/8/2022 | “There can’t possibly have been a worldwide Flood. Where would all the water have gone after the Flood?” This is a common objection to belief in the biblical account of the Flood of Noah’s time. Did the water drain away, or evaporate? This misconception is because our society is very Western-centered. As a child, growing up in Britain, all pictures of the Earth would have London at their center. This is, after all, where the 0º longitude line is! In America, most similar images would show the United States at the center. But what if we center our image on the Pacific Ocean? Then we will see a hemisphere almost entirely made up of ocean. This reminds us that nearly three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water. What if all the existing water on the Earth could be spread out? French diver and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau used to say: Were the crust of earth to be leveled – with great mountain ranges like the Himalayas and ocean abysses like the Mariana Trench evened out – no land at all would show above the surface of the sea. Earth would be covered by a uniform sheet of water – more than 10,000 feet deep! This agrees with what the Bible says in Psalm 104:8: The mountains rose, the valleys [or deeps] sank down to the place that you appointed for them. The rising of the mountains and the lowering of the ocean deeps at the end of the Flood easily explains where all the floodwater went. It didn’t go anywhere. It is all still on planet Earth. Our Magnificent Creator God’s Master Plan provides for every situation we have ever encountered or ever will! |
| 9/7/2022 | It is notable that the first giving of the Gospel was spoken to Satan, but in the hearing of Adam and Eve. It is also notable that the first Gospel was given immediately after the first sin. God, in His mercy, did not leave mankind for a moment without a means of salvation. The Lord God said to the serpent… I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15) The word translated “offspring” is zera and elsewhere always refers to the offspring of the father. So, who could be the offspring of the woman? The strong implication is that this will be a man who does not have an earthly father, but does have an earthly mother. We therefore assume that this is a prophecy of the coming Messiah, Jesus. Also in the Old Testament, whenever there is a direct appearance of God, we assume that this is a pre-incarnate appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity. Therefore, this announcement of the Gospel in Genesis 3:15 is possibly the Son of God prophesying His own coming as a man, stating that He will bruise or crush the head of the serpent. Did Adam and Eve believe this Gospel? I think it is possible that they did. But whether or not Adam and Eve believed, the fact remains that our Magnificent Creator God provided the way of salvation right from the beginning, as soon as sin had entered the world!!! |
| 9/6/2022 | Rest well last night? Keep both your eyes closed? Settle down into rhythmic breathing? What if you had to keep one eye open all night and make a conscious decision every time you needed to breathe? That’s how dolphins sleep. Their breathing is not automatic; they must decide when to take their next breath. God designed them that way, but He also gave them some pretty amazing abilities. Dolphins allow only half of their brain to sleep at a time, and they close only one eye at a time. When the left eye is closed, the right half of the brain sleeps. When the right eye is closed, the left side of the brain gets some… well, shut-eye. They alternate from one side of the brain to the other, getting the rest they need yet never fully losing consciousness. The fish of the sea can speak to us of God’s glory. His natural world is full of curious wonders, and the genius of creation moves us to worship. Today look for an animal—any animal, from the kitten in your kitchen to the sparrow outside your window—and take a moment to praise our Magnificent Creator God for His inventive genius! |
| 9/5/2022 | Popular science information websites sometimes reveal fascinating facts. The Science Daily website recently published an article suggesting that water is not one, but two liquids. One would have thought that we knew everything that there was to know about water. It covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. Up to 60 percent of the human body is made up of water. It is essential for life, and we are familiar with it in our everyday life, in ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, and so many different bodies of water worldwide. However, we are also familiar with the fact that water has many anomalous properties which set it apart from other liquids. A team of researchers at Sweden’s Stockholm University have discovered, using X-ray analysis, that there are two different arrangements for water molecules in liquid water, especially at low temperatures, just above the melting point of ice. We know that if water had a melting point consistent with the small size of its molecule alone, its melting point would be very low. However, water molecules associate together in different formations because of the so-called hydrogen-bonding between molecules. Apparently, at low temperatures, this can cause such a high association between molecules that the liquid, or at least portions of it, can become a thick, viscous liquid just as it freezes into ice. At once simple and highly complex, molecular and inter-molecular arrangements in water cause this common, yet mysterious liquid, to do so many things for us that we tend to take for granted. That such a seemingly simple material can still have properties for us to research shows something of the creativity of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 9/4/2022 | Scientists are learning that even the lowly bacteria have mind and memory. New research is showing that mind, memory, brain, and personality did not evolve. These can be found in the lowliest of creatures, including the bacteria. Another sign of intelligence in a life form is the ability to learn. Using attracting and repelling substances, scientists have found that bacteria can learn about their surroundings and draw conclusions. Follow-up tests showed that they later remember what they learned. Scientists have even found that younger bacteria learn better than older ones. If some things are not learned when young, they never can be learned! It seems that it’s hard to teach an old bacterium new tricks! The biggest surprise of all came when scientists discovered that bacteria have what the researchers called individual personality. They are mystified about how bacteria, each with the same genetic structure and from the same environment, can develop unique quirks in behavior. Because we find individual personality even in the lowly bacteria, we know that did not evolve. That God would give even a bacterium the gift of personality shows us something about His mind toward us. Nothing is so small or unimportant that it escapes His attention. Since He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from the decay that is in the world because of sin, there is no force too great for Him to overcome. Surely He is a Magnificent Creator God of details as well as a God of love, Who is concerned about every individual among us!!! |
| 9/3/2022 | “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.” Psalm 50:10-12 “If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?” Many of us are used to such accusations from atheists, but, unfortunately, many Christians do not know how to answer the point. Christians would be right to point to Genesis 3 and show that evil came into the world by disobedience – the disobedience of Adam – which polluted the entire world. However, there are some who object to this presentation of the Eden account on the grounds that, if God is a God of love and righteousness, how could He allow evil to happen in this way? This question leads some, incorrectly, to assume that God cannot know for sure what is going to happen in the future. The problem, if such it is, is better resolved by reasoning in biblical categories. Thinking in categories appears to be a lost art. Our error is in judging God by human standards even though God rebukes us, in Psalm 50, declaring: “You thought that I was just like you.” God is not like us, even though we are made in His image. We understand events through the passage of time, but God is transcendent over time. Therefore, to us it appears that God, in His Sovereignty, wills two different things; He permits evil but is not responsible for it – we are. If we do not fully understand this, we remind ourselves that His thoughts are so much higher than ours. Our magnificent Creator God exceeds anything we can comprehend with our human minds which is why we have faith in an omniscient and omnipotent Father!!! |
| 9/2/2022 | When Isaac Asimov wrote his famous robot stories, we all thought we knew what robots looked like. They looked like us. Indeed, many of Asimov’s robots began to look indistinguishable from human beings, such as the iconic R Daneel Olivaw, who partnered with detective Elijah Baley in the sci-fi crime novel The Caves of Steel. As real-life robots began to appear in industry, making cars and operating other machinery, they did not look quite so anthropomorphic. Now in the 21st century, self-mobile robots are not necessarily built to walk like people. For example, we have already seen tiny flying robots about the size and shape of a cockroach – and liable to be just as beloved! A more recent robotic development has seen soft robots built to imitate jellyfish. Two layers of elastic polymer are joined – one stressed and one unstressed. Between the layers, air can be pumped, reversing the stressing and enabling the robot to swim through water. A third stress-free layer provides direction, and the whole machine is able to lift and carry fairly large cargos. The video accompanying the research shows strips of this robotic material being used out of water as a prehensile grip that would have sensitivity approaching that of human hands. As with all new technologies, it is to be hoped that good uses are found for it. God has given us dominion over this world, and technological developments, such as the soft robot, are methods by which humans can operate under this divine mandate. What a Magnificent Creator God we serve using the vast array of inventions He has taught us to make!!! |
| 9/1/2022 | In the early 1960s, some unusually blue star-like objects were observed in the universe, giving out radio frequencies along with visible light. There were a number of them. Through telescopes, they appeared to have fuzzy boundaries. They were given the name Quasi-Stellar Radio Sources – and this was quickly abbreviated to quasars. Another odd feature of these objects was the existence, in their spectra, of emission lines, similar to those of stars, but at the “wrong” frequencies. The emission lines in normal stars were known to be due to hydrogen, but the lines in the quasar’s spectrum had a wavelength about 15% longer than that of hydrogen in other stars, or in the laboratory. It was eventually realized that this effect must be due to red shift – but a red shift bigger than anything that had previously been seen. An application of Hubble’s Law – which shows that the red shift is proportional to the object’s distance – showed that the quasar 3C 273 was over 2 billion light years away and was therefore over 100 times more luminous than typical stars within the same cluster. The existence of such amazing objects once again underlines for us how true it is that the heavens declare the glory of God. So many objects have now been discovered that astronomers give them numbers like 3C 273. How interesting it is, then, that the Bible tells us that our Magnificent Creator God knows the actual name of every single astronomical object!!! |
| 8/31/2022 | It was, they say, the “Great Dying” – supposedly 250 million years ago. 57% of all land-dwelling vertebrates became extinct. Yet, amidst the death and destruction of this event, a new group of animals arose. We call them the dinosaurs. One interesting evolutionary study suggests that this so-called Permian-Triassic Extinction was initially triggered by large-scale volcanic activity. An article on the ScienceDaily website explains it thus: Following the discovery of volcanic rocks of the same age as the extinction, volcanic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions had previously been suggested as an important contributor to this extinction event. How could they possibly know that these rocks are the same age? Volcanic rocks would be dated by radiometric methods; fossil-bearing rocks, by comparison with nearby other rocks, and estimating the ages by examining the fossils contained within. The article is also implying a massive climate change caused by volcanic CO2 emissions. In short, there is little or no evidence for the climate change, the CO2 emissions, or any correlation between the two. The Bible gives a very much shorter timescale than millions of years – a timescale of only just over 6,000 years. Also giving the lie to the evolutionary myth is the fact that death could not have occurred before Adam sinned. Instead, dinosaurs were magnificent land animals created by our Magnificent Creator God on Day Six of creation. |
| 8/30/2022 | Plants make cellulose. Cellulose is a type of natural plastic made of many sugar molecules linked together. Scientists have known for years how to use the natural plastic qualities of cellulose to make things like cellophane and rayon. Scientists have also known that animals generate a similar natural plastic called chitin. Like cellulose, chitin is a carbohydrate made of long chains of sugar molecules. Chitin is found in the shells of all insects and crustaceans, like crabs. Each year the crabmeat industry had thrown away thousands of tons of chitin because scientists couldn’t figure out how to extract chitin from the shells in a usable form. Finally in 1975 scientists discovered how to remove the chitin from shells and change its form so it could be made into whatever forms they needed. Suture thread made from chitin dissolves in the body. This means that stitches don’t have to be removed, and it can be more easily knotted than regular suture thread. Suture thread made from chitin also causes no allergic reaction, and it seems to promote healing. It’s hard to believe that a crab shell, which is usually thrown away, could do so much! Food processing companies are even using a chemical made from chitin to recover protein from wastewater. Almost everything in the creation seems to have numerous uses for human needs. This is testimony that our Magnificent Creator God has made this universe for us and that He cares about our needs. In the Bible we learn that He has provided for our greatest need through His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 8/29/2022 | For many people, bats bring to mind words like “creepy,” “fangs,” “rabies,” and even “ugly.” However, over 450 years ago, Martin Luther marveled at the delicate beauty of the bat. He pronounced the creature an excellent witness to the skill and wisdom of the Creator. God must also like bats. Almost one-fourth of all mammals He created are bats! The flying fox bat has a wingspan of nearly six feet. Bumblebee bats, native to Thailand, are the smallest mammals known, weighing less than a penny. There are brilliantly patterned tropical bats called butterfly bats. And hundreds of species of tropical plants depend on bats as pollinators. Popular legend considers bats a serious part of the rabies problem. The truth is that raccoons, skunks, foxes, and even dogs and cats are more likely to have rabies. In fact, one study shows that in Pennsylvania you are more likely to find a rabid cow than a rabid bat. In reality, bats are delicate, helpful and intelligent creatures. A typical North American bat will eat about 600 mosquitoes an hour. Large colonies will consume between 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of insects per night! Bats can be trained, demonstrating their intelligence. And finally, an important warning. If you find sleeping bats, don’t disturb them. Even one such disturbance during sleep can be fatal since stored nutrition may be consumed by the disturbance before the next feeding cycle. So next time you see a bat, don’t recoil in fear. Rather, say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Magnificent Creator God who made both of you! |
| 8/28/2022 | One of the criticisms of solar power is that it is so variable. Clearly, a solar plant is going to produce no energy at night and an inadequate supply when the sky is cloudy. On the other hand, a suitable size plant could over-produce when sunlight is intense. Plants have a similar problem. The rapidly changing incidence of sunlight on their leaves could, conceivably, cause problems within the plant. However, researchers have discovered that plants have mechanisms to cope with these variations, and one such mechanism could answer the old question: “Why are plants green?” Plants produce high energy carbohydrate molecules from water vapor and carbon dioxide by the well-known process of photosynthesis. This endothermic reaction requires the input of energy in the form of light, and the reaction is catalyzed by the green dye chlorophyll. What many of us have not considered is why chlorophyll is green. White light is a mixture of all three primary colors – red, green and blue – which have increasing frequency and, hence, increasing energy, in that order. The remarkable thing about plants, therefore, is that they are absorbing light energy only at either end of the visible spectrum while rejecting – and reflecting – the middle of the spectrum, which is green. Researchers have shown that this selective absorption of certain frequencies minimizes “noise” and, therefore, enables the plant to cope with rapidly changing conditions of sunshine. Our Magnificent Creator God, in His Creation, has literally thought of everything. No wonder He said “and it was good”! |
| 8/27/2022 | Garlic. Even say the word and some people move away to give you some distance. Others gather around because, to them, garlic helps make the meal. Garlic has begun to attract the attention of medical researchers as well. At the Tagore Medical College in India, researcher Arun Bordia kept track of 432 heart attack survivors for three years. During that time, half of the survivors drank the juice from six to ten cloves of fresh garlic each day, while others took a garlic-scented drink with no garlic in it. Over the three-year period, the garlic group had 32% fewer heart attacks and 45% fewer deaths than the other group. Research in the United States with chickens, who metabolize cholesterol in much the same way as humans, suggests a reason for these results. Chickens that were fed aged garlic extract showed a 50% reduction in the kind of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Medical researchers are also looking at some interesting evidence that garlic may help prevent some forms of cancer, especially stomach cancer. When the Creator made the heavens and Earth, He knew that humans would disobey Him, destroying the creation with sin. He also knew that in doing so we would bring disease and death into the world. We can thank Him that He stocked the Earth with substances that could be used to treat some of the earthly effects of sin. However, we can thank our Magnificent Creator God even more joyfully that He provided the full cure for sin for each of us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ! |
| 8/26/2022 | Our eyes do more work and tell more about us than many people realize. These amazing organs are so closely tied into the brain that they have been referred to as part of the brain. Your eyes were among your first organs to form. Within four weeks of fertilization, an unborn infant’s eyes begin to form. Interestingly enough, many newborns can move their eyes independently of each other, which can be a shock to unsuspecting parents. Usually the eyes are working together within a few months. However, those eye muscles will get more of a workout during our lifetimes than any other voluntary muscle. During any 24-hour period, our eyes will move about 100,000 times. That’s equivalent to walking 50 miles every day! Studies have shown that people with dark eyes generally have faster reaction times than people with light-colored eyes. Brown-eyed people generally are better at tennis while blue-eyed people generally do better at golf. Our eyes secrete different kinds of tears. Normal tears contain bacteria-fighting chemicals produced by cells in the lining of the eyelid. Emotional tears contain hormones released by the body in response to stress, including a natural painkiller. One more eye fact: The vitamin A in carrots is necessary for the proper working of the rods in your eye. The rods themselves are responsible for night vision. On a clear, dark night a healthy eye can see the light from a single candle 25 miles away! Our Magnificent Creator God spoke His Master Plan into existence, including the features of sight, with no effort at all!!! |
| 8/25/2022 | “Dog bites man” is not an unusual headline. However, “Man bites dog” would usually get people’s attention. If that’s true, the headline “Leeches teach physicians” should capture everyone’s attention. Physicians used leeches in bloodletting treatments well into the 19th century. They were used to treat everything from headaches to heart disease. As the 20th century matured, the medical use of leeches became not only a memory but a symbol of how backward medicine used to be. Now, as the 21st century is underway, leeches are again a part of modern medicine. To obtain their food, leeches inject a powerful blood thinner called hirudin. This hirudin is what interests modern medical researchers in leeches. Doctors have for many years been using a blood thinner called heparin to dissolve blood clots, such as those associated with heart attacks. But researchers are finding that hirudin is ten times as effective as heparin in dissolving clots, and in addition it works directly to prevent clotting. The studies continue. However, medical researchers are convinced that the blood thinner which leeches taught them how to make offers a powerful medicine. Should the possibilities presented by this modern medicine be realized, many lives that are now lost due to blood clotting may soon be routinely saved. Our Magnificent Creator God of the heavens and Earth is so wise and generous that He can teach even modern science some new things through a seemingly simple creature like the leech! |
| 8/24/2022 | They are the only cells in the human body that repeatedly die and self-regenerate throughout life. They are probably the only cells in the body that inspired a Broadway play named after them. And science considers them so interesting that several branches of science are studying them. I am talking about hair cells. As scientists are learning more about hair, they are coming to greater appreciation of, as one researcher put it, hair’s bewildering biology. A Harvard molecular biologist admitted that one of the reasons we know so little about hair is that scientists have avoided studying this complex structure. The average scalp has about 100,000 hairs growing at any one time. Each hair follicle produces hair for about two to five years, followed by a rest period of four to six months. A miniature assembly line of cells divides within the follicle, pushing older hair cells upward through the skin. Pigmentation is added as each new cell is produced. When the follicle is at rest, it shrivels and many of its cells die. However, seed cells, promising new life to the follicle, hide within it waiting for the signal to spring back to life. As humans grow older, the resting time of the follicles increases and growing time decreases, especially in men. So if you find yourself balding, you’re not necessarily losing your hair. It’s just that your hair is spending more time resting than it used to. God tells us that He cares so much about each one of us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head – as well He should – our Magnificent Creator God designed and created every one of them!!! |
| 8/23/2022 | We don’t often think about our sense of smell. While our noses are on the job all the time, we note an odor only when it is unusual. Most of the time, the scents around us contribute, unnoticed, to our overall impression of our surroundings. It’s hard to remain tense at the beach. Simply the mention of the water and waves, the sand and sun brings back to memory the last trip to the beach and starts relaxing a person. However therapeutic these elements of the beach are, scientists have found that the one beach fixture that is probably most responsible for relaxing us is the smell. The smelly chemical that utility companies put in natural gas so that we can smell leaks is methyl mercaptan. This chemical is also produced by rotting meat. The human nose is extremely sensitive to this smell. We can detect as little as one 400-billionth of a gram of it in a quart of air. Doctors have long known that their noses are helpful in diagnosing disease. A person is brought into the emergency room in a coma. It’s very likely that the doctor will smell the patient’s breath as he tries to discover the problem. A sweet smell could indicate diabetes. The smell of ammonia could indicate a kidney malfunction. Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic. Diphtheria can be identified by a sickeningly sweet odor, and people with the plague smell like apples. A patient who smells like freshly baked bread may have typhoid. While we seldom think about our sense of smell, it’s a wonderful gift from our Magnificent Creator God for which we owe Him thanks!!! |
| 8/22/2022 | Do your eyes ever play tricks on you? Our eyes regularly play tricks on us with the help of our brains. Repeated research has shown that the images we see are not exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes and brains work together to construct the images we call sight. It’s not that our eyes are out to hoodwink us. Most of the time our eyes are working to help us. Working together, our brain and eyes add logical details to the images we see. Each of us has a blind spot in our vision because there are no vision cells where the optic nerve is. Instead of showing us a spot of nothing at the blind point in our field of vision, our brain invents an image from surrounding details. Your brain pulls the same trick on you when you proofread your completed manuscript. While others can still find typos, you may not. Your brain knows what you are saying and so it automatically shows you a repaired version, making many of your typing errors invisible. Your pupils can reveal your thoughts. Studies show that when seeing unpleasant scenes the pupils retract. Pleasant or interesting scenes cause the pupils to open wider. Charles Darwin wrote, “To suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” We don’t often agree with Charles Darwin, but this time we do! Our Magnificent Creator God has once more demonstrated that all things come as a result of His Master Plan! |
| 8/21/2022 | In recent years, our knowledge about Pluto has multiplied over and over again. Despite its status being downgraded to that of a mere Dwarf Planet rather than a planet proper, NASA determined to send out a space probe called New Horizons in January 2006. New Horizons finally reached Pluto in January 2015 and sent back invaluable data for about 18 months, with the result that we now probably know more about the surface of Pluto than that of parts of Earth’s ocean floor. Some surface evidence has caused scientists to think that maybe Pluto was a hot body when it came into existence. This heat could still be there, prompting speculation that there could be a liquid ocean beneath the icy frozen surface. Whenever water is discovered in the Solar System, thoughts turn to the possibility of life having evolved – especially as Pluto’s surface shows evidence of the existence of methane and ammonia molecules, which scientists always think could provide a synthetic route to organic compounds. Such interpretations ignore the fact that Earth was created separately from, and three days before, the creation of the other stars and planets. Our Magnificent Creator God in His wisdom chose the Earth to be the sole focus of life! |
| 8/20/2022 | The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri 26 trillion miles away. That is 26 with 12 zeros after it. 26,000,000,000,000. When our Magnificent Creator God creates something, distance is of no concern!!! |
| 8/19/2022 | Many people know that, despite its appearance, coral is actually a tiny animal. Even a small coral growth may be made up of billions of tiny animals, each living inside its limestone skeleton. What many people don’t know is that coral cannot live without the help of algae – a plant. Thousands of one-celled algae live in the tiny stomach of each coral polyp. The polyp requires the waste products of the algae to complete its nutrition requirements and to get the calcium with which it builds reefs. In return, the polyp’s stomach provides an ideal protected living place for the algae. Incidentally, the wonderful colors in living coral come from the algae in each polyp’s stomach. Evolutionists have said that it must take millions of years for the tiny polyps to build large coral reefs – like the 2,000-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, incidentally, is considered the largest structure ever built by living organisms. However, it has now been shown that coral polyps can double their own weight in just over 10 days! As a result, the claim of millions of years for the age of the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by a factor of 40! Many of the long-age figures claimed by evolutionists have had to be drastically revised downward as we have learned more about the creation. The resulting figures fit the Bible’s account of history much more closely. Our Magnificent Creator God developed His Master Plan – a perfect plan – before anything else and we shall live with it throughout eternity!!! |
| 8/18/2022 | It’s not very pretty, nor is it graceful, but Colombia’s rock-climbing catfish has a unique ability among fish. Perhaps there are days when a salmon, trying to make it up a waterfall, wishes that it could simply climb the rocks. The rock-climbing catfish’s climbing equipment begins with a powerful sucker mouth. Once it attaches itself to a rock, it can stay stuck despite any torrent. The rock-climbing catfish also has a bony plate on its belly that helps it hold its place while it repositions its sucker a little further up the rocks. The plate has fins with tiny, backward-pointing teeth. These teeth dig into the rock and prevent slipping. The catfish’s third special feature is a set of powerful muscles to control the plate. Once the rock-climbing catfish has attached its sucker to the rock, it pulls up its stomach plate and anchors it. With its body anchored, it moves its sucker up the face of the rock and repeats the process. Following this method, the rock-climbing catfish can walk its way up a 20-foot rock wall against the torrent of a waterfall in about 30 minutes! Our Magnificent Creator God thought of everything in His master design for every creature!!! |
| 8/17/2022 | “You can’t possibly believe that there was a worldwide Flood. If the Ark was floating above Mount Everest, the air would be so thin that they would not be able to breathe.” This objection to the Flood is a very common one that I hear frequently. It is also one that is most easily disproved. In fact, I am always very surprised that so many people think this must be a valid argument. The statement contains two incorrect presuppositions. Let’s deal with the easiest false presupposition first. This is the idea that an Ark floating above Mount Everest would suffer from thin air. But if the Earth’s oceans were all combined and at that height, they would have displaced the atmosphere. Therefore, the surface of the Flood would be the new sea level and the air would not be thin; the surface would be the new sea level, and the air would be as dense as at the coast. The second incorrect presupposition is that Mount Everest existed before the Flood. Psalm 104 shows us that the mountains were raised and the valleys, or rather ocean deeps, were lowered at the end of the Flood. Therefore, pre-Flood mountains would have been quite a lot lower than post-Flood mountains. It is always interesting to notice that questions designed to ridicule our belief in the literal truth of Genesis are often based on faulty presuppositions. It is not a surprise to us that genuine science is consistent with our Magnificent Creator God’s word! |
| 8/16/2022 | A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day [65–70 times a minute] with no time off for rest, to get most of us through seventy years or more. Our Magnificent Creator God’s master design for His master creation is infinite in detail and function!!! |
| 8/15/2022 | A gypsy moth caterpillar infestation can strip the leaves from large numbers of trees, threatening the trees’ lives. Since they don’t have a means of escape, it doesn’t seem as if the poor trees have much of a chance. But botanists were tipped off to the possibility that trees may not be all that defenseless when they began to investigate why only a few trees were badly damaged by insects in an infected grove while most stood unharmed. They discovered that when facing a threat like gypsy moth caterpillars, trees begin to defend themselves by sounding the alarm. A large variety of trees – including beeches, poplars, sugar maples and red oaks – communicate with each other. Scientists believe the trees communicate by releasing chemicals called pheromones into the air. What they now know is that before insects attacking one tree can get to the tree next door, the second tree has already begun defending itself. How do they defend themselves? When under attack or notified by other trees of attack, most trees begin to manufacture an array of poisons. Some of the poisons make leaves impossible to digest, while others kill the insects outright. Some make as many as eight poisons at once, and many can change the poisons that are made from year to year. Our our Magnificent Creator God’s concern for living things extends even to plants! If He sees to this detailed level of care for trees, can there be anything in our lives that is too small for His loving concern? |
| 8/14/2022 | During World War II Hitler and his Nazi Army killed one third of all of the then living Jews, six million of them. Our Magnificent Creator God’s plan of salvation is so perfect it would even have allowed Hitler to go to heaven if he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior!!! |
| 8/13/2022 | Many plants reproduce simply by cloning. The most obvious example of cloning that comes to mind is the dandelion. Unless you get all of the main dandelion root out of the ground, each piece of the root can sprout another dandelion, identical to the parent. The walking fern reproduces by cloning too. It moves across the countryside, albeit slowly, by producing new plants. A new plant is generated wherever the tips of its leaves touch the ground. Each new plant is identical to the parent. The bamboo reproduces through underground stems. The different species of bamboo live anywhere from 20 to 120 years. During their life spans, they produce only by cloning. Then they flower – once. When it’s time for a particular species to flower, every member of that species, no matter where in the world it grows, flowers gloriously. Each flower can have as many as 100 pollen-producing stamens. Once the seeds are ripe and scattered, every member of that species in the world dies. At this point, the entire species exists only in the scattered seeds. This is brilliant testimony to a recent creation of all bamboos at the same time. If evolution produced them and the forces of change worked on them for millions of years, one would think that all members of the same species would no longer be in perfect synchronization. Bamboo makes a strong testimony for the recent creation reported in Genesis and performed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 8/12/2022 | Have angels always existed from eternity? The Bible says “No”. Only God, the One God in Three Persons, has existed for all eternity. So the angels and any other spirit beings that there might be must have been created by God. If the angels were created, then when were they created? Were they, perhaps, created before the creation week? Perhaps God made them a long time before He made the world. Again, the Bible is very clear that this is not the case. We read in Exodus 20:11 that everything was made in the six days of the Creation Week. So, we can definitely say that the Bible teaches that angels were created by God, they have not existed for all eternity, and that they must have been made during the creation week. However, we cannot be anywhere near as dogmatic about what day of the creation week God created them. If we look in the book of Job, we read this: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth… when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” It seems likely that these words refer to angels. If they were singing for joy at the foundation of the Earth, then they possibly saw most of creation happen. It is also my opinion that angels were created early on Day One of the Creation Week. At the end of the Creation Week, everything was “very good”. So all the angels were still good at the end of that week. No angel had yet fallen, though that would happen soon, before the events of Genesis 3. Our Magnificent Creator God did nothing by happenstance. His master plan was in effect during creation week and it’s still in effect now!!! |
| 8/11/2022 | Many plants, especially orchids, offer different ploys to fool insects into pollinating them. Each of these ploys shows planning, design and the ability to create the design that will work. That there are so many examples makes it impossible for any rational person to believe that mindless, impersonal forces could have made these plants. Four different groups of orchids produce flowers that look so much like the female of the insect that pollinates them that pollinators will try to mate with them. The Brassia orchid found in southern Florida produces a flower that mimics the prey of its pollinator, the spider wasp. The flower is so designed that as the wasp stings its supposed prey – really the flower – pollen is deposited on his head. The pollen is then carried to a nearby female flower and deposited in just the right place during another attack. Another orchid imitates an aggressive swarm of bees as it blows in the wind. The strongly territorial bees that live in the area swarm and attack the flowers. In the process, they transfer the pollen from male to female flowers. The female flowers of at least 50 species of Mexican orchids offer fake pollen to lure pollen-eating insects that have been feeding on male flowers. Many of these insect-orchid relationships are so tightly interlocked that neither could survive without the other. This speaks of a planned creation by our Magnificent Creator God! It also bears witness that all forms of life came into being in a relatively short time, not over millions of years as evolutionists would have it. |
| 8/10/2022 | Many people know about the devastating and explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980. Not so many people know that the volcano has erupted since then, but in less spectacular fashion. Throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, lava continued to appear in the crater, with a dome of lava growing in the middle of the crater. On October 11th 2004, magma once again erupted from the volcano, causing a new lava dome to grow rapidly south of the existing dome. Many unusual but temporary shapes were formed, such as a large lava formation called the “whaleback”. On July 2nd 2005, the pressure of the magma resulted in an eruption, which broke the whaleback, and sent ash into the air, visible from Seattle. A number of other eruptions occurred during the period from 2004 through 2008. On July 10th 2008, there had been no activity for six months, so the US Geological Survey officially concluded that this eruptive period was over. There has been no significant eruptive activity since then. The lava dome is now quite big. The summit of the lava dome is currently about 7,500 feet above sea level, so it is still below the 8,300 foot high crater walls. However, if the dome grows any larger, it could grow above the crater rim. Basically, the lava dome is a new volcano growing inside the ruins of the old one. It already takes up 6% of the space lost by the big 1980 eruption. One thing is clear. Once again, even in less spectacular fashion, our Magnificent Creator God has used Mount St Helens to prove that the surface of the Earth can change rapidly at times, and that changes do not require millions of years. |
| 8/9/2022 | Forestry organizations have a major problem with beetles. The Mountain Pine beetle infests many coniferous trees in the Western United States. Apparently 40 million acres of forest have been damaged by these critters. A fungus can get into the tree with the beetle, and this fungus prevents transportation of water and nutrients. The beetle lays its eggs in the bark, and beetle larvae can also cause the tree to die. If this were not bad enough, forestry companies then have the difficulty of disposing of these trees, before they cause further damage from fire. The timber from the trees, however, is likely to be cracked and damaged, and is often stained by the presence of the beetles and fungus. University of Washington scientists have come up with an ingenious solution. The damaged timber can still be used as a fuel. So the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences have come up with a way of heating this wood, and other organic materials, at very high temperatures, in the absence of oxygen. This treatment creates a type of fuel oil, which is a dark brown liquid. This fuel has been used in some countries for heating buildings, such as hospitals. Different kinds of oil will have different compositions. While there is not necessarily a close similarity between this wood oil, and petroleum oil, the process at least demonstrates that fuel oils do not take millions of years to form. Similarly, petroleum oils need not have taken millions of years, but could have formed in conditions at the time of the Flood. Only our Magnificent Creator God could have so carefully planned every detail needed for our survival on this earth!!! |
| 8/8/2022 | The largest known beetle in the world is the aptly named goliath beetle. This African beetle can become almost as large as a mouse. Dinosaurs were not the largest animals ever to live. The great blue whale holds that honor. The smallest mammal in the world is smaller than many insects. A newly discovered species of bat in Thailand weighs only six one-hundredths of an ounce. Such extremes might lead some to wonder whether those giant insects we see in the movies would ever develop. Could a spider grow to be as large as a house? You will be happy to know that no spider or any other insect could grow as large as a house. We can be sure of this because of the way insects breathe. Insects breathe through small tubes along their bodies. These tubes provide oxygen directly to their internal tissues. If an insect were to grow too large, these tubes could not get enough oxygen to the tissues. This is because the larger the creature, the more internal living tissue that requires oxygen. You and I have lungs that provide a network of surfaces equal to the size of a tennis court. An insect our size would need a body that has the surface area of a tennis court, too, which is an impossibility. Even though different creatures have different organs to supply their needs, each creature has just the right organs for its needs. This is a sign of our Magnificent Creator God’s wisdom. |
| 8/7/2022 | For a moment think of the uniqueness of the human body. You, friend, are not a blob of protoplasm but a living organism of some 50 trillion cells. Your brain weighs about a kilo—roughly 2 ½ to 3 pounds. It consists of two hemispheres of gray matter connected by an interface called a corpus collosum. Daily, 10,000 thoughts flit in and out of your brain. A hundred billion neurons process information. Its complexity is something that we are just beginning to understand. Your heart pumps 18,000 gallons of blood daily through 75,000 miles of vessels and arteries. Try building something like that. Then there is the iris of your eye that automatically opens and closes depending on the intensity of light and lubricates itself with fluid called tears. Your hand, though, is perhaps the most amazing part of your body. Dr. Paul Brand, the great hand surgeon of the past century, believed it proved your uniqueness as a human being as does nothing else. Our Magnificent Creator God simply spoke this magnificent creation into existence! |
| 8/6/2022 | There are at least four known types of orchids that effectively pretend to be female insects. They are so good at this ruse that they attract the attentions of male pollinators. That there are four different varieties that do this makes it clear that this trickery isn’t due to chance. The Creator does not want us to make the mistake of thinking that He doesn’t exist. The Ophrys group of orchids are found around the Mediterranean. Ophrys orchids produce flowers that look and smell so much like the insect that pollinates it, the male insect will mate with the flower. In the process, he picks up the pollen. The pollen is then carried to another flower, thus ensuring the next generation. The flowers even mimic the sheen of the female’s wings, the furry fringe on her abdomen, and her antennae. The Cryptostylus orchid, found in New Guinea and Australia, mimics the female of the wasp that pollinates it. The Cryptostylus does this so perfectly that it even moves as a mating female. The same is true of an orchid found in the Andes that is pollinated by a particular species of fly through the same ruse. God has much more in mind than just letting us know that He is. He wants us to see that He is intimately involved with His creatures. Through the perfect life of Jesus Christ, and His suffering, death and resurrection, He has removed the final barriers between us and Himself. With the barrier of sin removed by forgiveness, our Magnificent Creator God may be even more intimately involved with each of us on a personal basis! |
| 8/5/2022 | The cockeyed squid lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone” where sunlight barely filters through the deep waters. The squid’s nickname is a reference to its two extremely different eyes: the left eye develops over time to become considerably larger than the right—almost twice as big. Scientists studying the mollusk have deduced that the squid uses its right eye, the smaller one, to look down into the darker depths. The larger, left eye, gazes upward, toward the sunlight. Our Magnificent Creator God thought of every need for every creature He ever made!!! |
| 8/4/2022 | The Andean condor is the world’s largest soaring bird. With a wingspan of more than ten feet, condors can soar for up to five hours, covering one hundred miles, without flapping their wings once! In one study, a group of condors spent just one percent of their time aloft flapping their wings. Our Magnificent Creator God saw to every need of every creature He ever made!!! |
| 8/3/2022 | The half-life is a value which gives an indication of the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes. Radioactive decay occurs in an exponential, rather than linear way. Suppose an isotope, which we will call X, has a half-life of 1 year. If we have 32lb of X today, then in a year, we will have just 16lb – half of 32. In another year, however, we will lose only 8lb more—half of 16. The year after that, there will be 4lb left, and so on. The term half-life is misleading. Half-life is a notional number, showing how long it would take for half a given radioactive material to decay. When we say that uranium-238 has a half-life of 4,500 million years, this figure is not a problem for creationists. We simply mean that uranium is decaying at a rate, whereby half of it would not decay until 1,500 million years had passed. Uranium-238 decays into stable lead-206 by a 14 step process. Eight of these steps involves the release of an alpha particle, which is the nucleus of a helium atom. So, every atom of uranium that turns into lead will also yield 8 atoms of helium. An igneous rock should, therefore, contain 8 helium atoms for every one lead atom. Of course, it doesn’t. Helium can escape into the atmosphere. But this means that we can calculate the speed at which helium can leave radioactive rocks. Measuring this speed reveals that uranium must actually have decayed very much faster in the past than it does today. Aren’t you glad it wasn’t left up to you to develop this world and the laws of physics under which it behaves? Be thankful we have a mighty Magnificent Creator God who knew just what He was doing!!! |
| 8/2/2022 | Two groups of tropical vines rely for reproduction on the world’s only known species of pollen-eating butterfly. Neither vine has very showy flowers, nor do their flowers have any scent. However, they don’t need to attract pollinators because the Heliconius butterfly depends on the pollen produced by the vines for its food. So the butterflies don’t go far from their food source. Since the butterfly depends on the pollen, the vines produce many more male flowers than female. This keeps its army of pollinators well fed. Being messy eaters, the butterflies end up with pollen all over them. But what would attract the butterfly to the female flower, which can be up to 20 feet away? Two tricks are used. First, a female flower usually grows close to where a male flower has just withered. Second, the female flower, while producing no pollen, looks just like the male flower to invite the butterfly’s attention. Did you see the intelligence in this arrangement? If only chance were involved, why would the only known species of pollen-eating butterfly be found with the only known vines that rely on their services? This is a very big planet! If there is no design in this arrangement, why should these vines offer female flowers that look like the males so that they will be pollinated? It is so clear that these butterflies were custom-made for these vines, and the vines were made for the butterflies. This is a witness to a personal Magnificent Creator God who is personally involved in life on Earth!!! |
| 8/1/2022 | The priests who served at the Temple began their “priesthood” at the age of thirty, having studied for twenty-eight years the priestly duties and responsibilities. The number of Levites serving the Temple in one capacity or another was 38,000, and of these, 24,000 of them were to carry out the work of the house of the Lord. It’s interesting to note that 4,000 of the 38,000 were “to praise the Lord” with instruments which King David had made to be used for “praising the Lord”. It was the “harp” that King David had made and used to “praise the Lord”. He also wrote many of the Psalms by using his harp. No detail was too small or too big for our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 7/31/2022 | Bees depend on a good memory of their surroundings to make the thousands of trips necessary to keep their hive in operation. Each day a single bee must make trips to hundreds of flowers, some as far as a mile from the hive. Scientists have long wondered how the tiny bee can remember what may be dozens of square miles of territory. When a bee finds a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and does a dance for the other bees. This dance tells them where a new find is located. Researchers have studied this in detail and can now interpret these dances. Researchers from Princeton University tricked a bee into dancing out a location that turned out to be in the middle of a nearby lake. After receiving the message, the other members of the hive simply ignored their fellow worker. She kept dancing, but no one would believe her. Only later, when the dance clearly said that the flowers were on the opposite side of the lake, did the other bees pay attention and check out the flowers. Researchers are now wondering whether bees keep a mental map of their surroundings. How else could they tell when someone gives them a false location? Evolutionary researchers are trying to figure out how such an “evolutionarily simple” creature as the bee could be so intelligent. However, the Bible makes clear that intelligence is not related to evolution. It is the gift of an all-wise Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 7/30/2022 | The human body, according to medical science, contains 37 trillion cells that reproduce themselves every seven years. Each one of the 37 trillion cells performs 10,000 different chemical functions, according to the late Dr. Ralph Byron of the City of Hope Cancer Clinic, yet all of them just work together to produce a healthy body. When you get tired, you cannot say, “All right, cell number 843,291, get to work. You are not pulling your share of the load.” All of these cells are linked together by nerve cells tied into a brain containing 100 billion cells (give or take a few). I hesitate to say that these 100 billion nerve cells are tied into a computer‑like device called the human brain since the human brain is far superior to any computer ever created. The eminent neuroscientist Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University in Israel says, “Our ability to understand all the details of even one brain is practically zero.” Only our Magnificent Creator God in all of His brilliance and magnificence could have thought up such a complex piece of creation!!! |
| 7/29/2022 | The Solar System has seen many impacts. On so many bodies of the Solar System, these impacts have produced craters. It is well known that the surface of the Moon contains many craters, which are thought to have been formed when a meteorite hit the Lunar surface. However, the Moon is not alone. I have often shown my audiences a photograph of the surface of Mercury, and asked them what it is, because I know that most people will think it is the Moon, because of its cratered surface. In recent years, exploratory, unmanned missions to bodies in the further reaches of the Solar System have revealed surfaces pockmarked with craters. We cannot give a definitive answer for how or when the craters were formed. Some creationists believe that this cratering was actually a part of God’s creative process, so that the cratering took place within the Creation Week. Others believe that the cratering was part of the process that initiated the Flood. One creation researcher has suggested that a massive Flood-time bombardment of other planets and moons would also have led to massive impacts on the Earth. Some of these impacts would have been of sufficient energy to cause large vertical faulting, and to help split the Earth’s crust into the Tectonic Plates we see today. Whatever cratering mechanism turns out to be the best one, we can be sure that these impacts were not random accidents, not merely freaks of nature. They had a purpose in our Magnificent Creator God’s plan, whether they were at the formation of the Solar System, or at the initiation of the Flood!!! |
| 7/28/2022 | Richard Dawkins believes he has found an organ system, which is badly designed, and so proves that no god could have designed it. He has popularized this accusation so widely that atheistic websites and forums simply quote the example, as if it were proven. He refers to the color receptors on the retina of the vertebrate eye. These are the wrong way round, he says, with the receptor pointing towards the retina, instead of out to the lens. He says: “Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away, from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light.” The wiring, to which he refers, is that of the nerves. He supposes that the nerves should be behind the retina, so that the receptors point outwards. However, the nerves cannot be behind the eye, as this is the space required for the cooling blood system. If this cooling system were not there, then the receptors would overheat. The receptors could also locally overheat, if they were pointed outward, and so could detect light directly. It would appear that it is better, safer, and more efficient for the receptors to receive light indirectly. Moreover, the nervous system is actually transparent, so light can get through the system just lensward of the receptors. Far from being bad design, the structure of the vertebrate eye is an example of masterful design. That, of course, is what we expect from the creativity of the Magnificent Creator God of the Bible!!! |
| 7/27/2022 | If we were to think about it, all Christians should be interested in astronomy. That does not mean that we should be experts in how stars work, or how light travels. But the Psalmist says that “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork”. So it is good to look upwards at night, and notice what God has made out there in the heavens and because of this to stop and consider what God has done. We are charged in Scripture never to worship anything in the heavens, because these are things that God has created, but it is right and proper to consider stars, planets, galaxies and so on, and to stand in awe at all that our Magnificent Creator God has made!!! In Genesis 1:14, God tells us that one of the purposes of the night sky is to mark signs and seasons for us. When night falls, it will be different stars that appear on the horizon at different times of year, because of the position of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, so we keep track of the seasons. But also, by measuring the angles of certain stars above the horizon, and above the equator, we can work out what latitude we are at. Coupled with the longitude, calculated using accurate time, we can pinpoint our position on the Earth. With our modern technology of smartphones and satellites, we take such matters for granted today. But our Magnificent Creator God provided us with time-keeping and positioning software in the sky, right from the beginning of creation. That is certainly a cause to praise His Name!!! |
| 7/26/2022 | Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria’s “eyes” and “ears.” The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just “simple” forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction – and even thinking – all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Magnificent Creator God who made us!!! |
| 7/25/2022 | How does your nose work? Medical researchers admit that they don’t know. Your nose performs an extremely unlikely job. It senses invisible molecules in the air and turns each molecule into a unique sensation that is sent to the brain. If the fact that molecules floating in the air could be detected was a modern discovery, it would be hailed as the scientific discovery of the century! Medical researchers do know that the roof of your nose cavity contains about 10 million cells that are wired directly into the brain. The nervous system that connects your olfactory cells to your brain is so large and complex that its surface area is several times greater than the surface area of your body. Researchers also know that your sense of smell is important to your sense of taste. For example, that’s why – when you have a head cold – chocolate tastes like a flavorless waxy paste. In this case, what you taste in your mouth has more to do with what is happening in your nose than on your tongue. Many creatures, including birds, can sense odors. Farmers who had difficulty with birds eating as much as 20 percent of the food set out in feed lots discovered that birds hate the smell of grapes. When they laced the feed with grape scent, the birds left it alone, but the cattle didn’t seem to mind. Every detail in the creation of everything that has ever existed was planned and created by our Magnificent Creator God. No detail was too small!!! |
| 7/24/2022 | What keeps the big-bodied bumblebee with those little, stubby wings in the air? Scientists are still trying to learn the secret of bumblebee flight. And while they are learning some astonishing things about the bumblebee, they still don’t know how he does it. Scientists have been testing bumblebees by monitoring their energy use, placing them in wind tunnels, and measuring their oxygen use. No, they haven’t been able to make little oxygen masks for the bees – bumblebees have 24 breathing holes. Scientists have learned that a flying bumblebee flaps its wings 160 times per second and consumes the equivalent of 180 candy bars per hour! A flying bee uses the same amount of oxygen for its body weight as a flying bird or a bat. However, unlike birds, the bumblebee uses no more oxygen when hovering than when flying. This is only one of the discoveries that contradict scientists’ theories. In fact, the director of the latest studies on bumblebee flight admits that they still have no idea how the bumblebee stays in the air. He warns other scientists to stop using the current theories on the subject because they are far too simple. Of course, our Magnificent Creator God knows how to make a bumblebee fly, even if the best of modern science can’t figure it out. This should help us to see that when scientists tell us they have figured out how everything could have been made without a Magnificent Creator God, they don’t know what they’re talking about. In His great magnificence God did it and that’s all there is to it!!! |
| 7/23/2022 | Perhaps no type of animal has been used more in biological research than the fruit fly. Certain biological processes such as reproduction or genetic replication are similar in most eukaryote organisms, so observing these in fruit flies might, unlikely as it may seem, have implications for how the processes work in humans. The great volume of academic research which uses the fruit fly as the subject can be seen by the fact that, to date, eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to work involving drosophila. There are several reasons why fruit flies make useful research subjects. From the moment a fruit fly egg has been laid to the moment the adult dies is, on average, about 50 days. The adult flies can mate and lay eggs after just 10 days. This means that three generations can have been studied in a month. A year would yield 36 generations. The effects of inherited genetic problems or defects can, therefore, be analyzed within months, as can the probabilities of genetic problems being inherited by future generations. God has surely designed all that there is for our benefit to help us study and improve our lives in this world. God expects us to use His blessings to help ourselves and to not expect Him to do everything for us. We may need a hole in the ground but our Magnificent Creator God might bless us with a shovel and wisdom to know how to dig. |
| 7/22/2022 | Even though many frogs live much of their lives out of the water, they need water to reproduce. This can be a problem since some frogs live in trees and some even live in the desert! For a tree frog, the trip from the treetops to a nearby pool is a long and dangerous journey. However, the Creator cares about all of His creatures. The leaves of the bromeliad that grows in the branches of many trees in the tropical forest form a private pool far above the ground. As a result, mama frog can raise her young without ever leaving the treetops! The desert would seem to offer an even greater challenge for a frog. However, since it pleased the Creator to place frogs in the desert – maybe to challenge the evolutionists – He has also provided for their needs. It may rain only once every two years in the deserts of central Australia. When it does rain, the water-holding frogs emerge from their underground hideaways to lay their eggs in the puddles. Before the puddles disappear, not only do the eggs hatch, but the young grow and develop into frogs that are able to store water until the next rain. As the desert again takes over, the frogs dig themselves back into the ground and go into suspended animation until the next rains come. A year or two later, the new generation will emerge after the next rain to raise their young. Neither chance nor the smartest frog in the world could design or create these abilities. Only a wise Magnificent Creator God could. And if the Creator has provided this much care for frogs, just think of how much more He cares about you and me in our everyday lives! |
| 7/21/2022 | “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Genesis 2:19 It surely wasn’t possible, we are often told, for Adam to have given names to all the millions of species of animals that exist on earth in the space of one day. Obviously, they tell us, this means that the Bible is wrong. In fact, the activity was nowhere near as arduous as this accusation suggests. The number of animals would be far less than the estimated 2 million species. Adam did not have to go looking for these animals. God brought them to him. God brought three classes of animals to Adam – livestock, birds of the heavens, and beasts of the field. All of these are vertebrates, whereas 98% of all species are invertebrates. Of the remaining 2% – or 40,000 species – many have developed from others (note: developed, not evolved) by the process of speciation. It is likely that the creatures were all descended from just a couple of thousand baramins, or created kinds. It would not be that difficult for Adam to assign a name to each of the animals that paraded before him, especially as he was created perfect, and unlikely to get tired. Suppose he took five seconds to name an animal. He could have named 2,000 animals in 2¾ hours. You might think such a task would be boring, but it was not onerous and would easily fit with all the other activities occurring on that sixth day of God’s creation, including our Magnificent Creator God making the land animals and making Eve from Adam! |
| 7/20/2022 | There are several unusual plants that have strange reproductive methods. The most unusual of all is the bucket orchid. This orchid grows in Central and South America. The flower forms a bucket, which fills with a sticky secretion from the plant. The flower then has to sit and wait for a bee. But it is not just any bee that can pollinate this plant. It has to be the special, beautiful, green orchid bee. The bee is attracted by the sweet liquid, but slips and falls into it. The exhausted bee eventually climbs out, through a passage way of Goldilocks proportions—not too big, not too small, just right. As the bee tries to escape through this passage, the flower holds it tight, and glues two pollen sacks on its back. After holding the bee long enough for the glue to dry, the flower releases the bee. If a bee arrives at the orchid, with pollen sacks already on its back, the flower lets it quickly through the system, and takes away the pollen sacks, before the bee can finally escape. Evolutionists maintain that this is an example of co-evolution—two organisms evolving so that they cannot do without each other. Which evolved first? It is difficult to see how one could have evolved before the other. It is far more sensible to take the biblical presupposition, that both were the work of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 7/19/2022 | The Willow Warbler is a fascinating little bird. It weighs less than half an ounce and measures about four inches from its beak to the tip of its tail. It likes open woodland with small trees and is particularly happy in areas managed by humans, such as coppices and young plantations. An attractive little bird, it is greenish-brown from above, with a yellowish underside. Willow Warblers are part of the Leaf Warbler, or Phylloscopus baramin (or created kind). There are 77 species in this baramin, but we are interested here in the species Phylloscopus trochilu, especially the subspecies Phylloscopus trochilus yakutensi. This remarkable little bird has the most incredible migratory behavior, traveling about 7,500 miles. Between April and August, the birds live and breed in eastern Siberia. But as the breeding season ends, the birds begin their long, exhausting flight to sub Saharan Africa, where they will spend the winter, from October through March. Then they begin the 7,500-mile journey back to Siberia. That’s 15,000 miles per year! The reason why these warblers migrate seems clear. They do not like the extremes of temperatures in either of their homes. But a more interesting question is: How do they know where to migrate? Scientists have speculated that migratory birds are able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. But those scientists who believe in evolution have to explain how the birds used trial and error to find their routes. A more logical explanation is that our Magnificent Creator God designed them to achieve this remarkable feat! |
| 7/18/2022 | There are between 10,000 and 15,000 species of orchids. While you surely are not familiar with all of them, it sounds strange to talk about orchid behavior. This huge variety of orchids offers a multitude of different flower shapes, colors and sizes. Each unique shape, color and size is perfectly suited to the bees, butterflies, bats, moths, flies and birds that are involved in that orchid’s pollination. Those orchids that use birds as pollinators have no scent. Instead, they offer the brightest of colors, appealing to the birds’ strongest sense. Evolutionists call this “co-evolution.” However, giving it a name doesn’t explain it. How did these orchids know that the bird’s strongest sense is sight? And how were these orchids able to perform genetic recombination on themselves so that they could develop their bright colors? No, giving something a scientific-sounding name doesn’t make naturalistic claims any more scientific. Or consider the bee orchid. It offers a flower that looks like a female bee. The purpose here is to attract male bees to a position that will load them with pollen. How can it be scientific to suggest that a plant purposely restructured itself to fool bees into pollinating it? Our Magnificent Creator God has purposely made it impossible to explain the creation without Him. He did this not simply so that we would see that He is real. His purpose is much greater. God seeks a personal relationship with you and has made that possible through the saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. It is to Christ that He would ultimately draw our attention. |
| 7/17/2022 | You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! Our Magnificent Creator God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
| 7/16/2022 | Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for Our Magnificent Creator God’s complete attention! |
| 7/15/2022 | How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements that we find that our Magnificent Creator God has provided for in the plant and animal kingdoms. |
| 7/14/2022 | There are those that claim that Evolution is a scientific theory. Scientific theories can be subject to the scientific method. If the same test or experiment is carried out under the same conditions, on different days or locations, the results should still be the same. The existence of scientific methodology suggests that ideas, referred to as science, actually divide under two headings. The first of these would be the testable, repeatable scientific ideas, which refer to situations here and now. These can be referred to as Observable or Operational Science. This is, in fact, the real science. Not only is there nothing unbiblical about Operational Science, we can insist that such science would not be possible without a rational, biblical worldview. The other scientific heading would be Historical Science. This is the type of science that refers to one-time, single events that allegedly happened in the past. Because these events are one-time events, they are not repeatable, nor are they falsifiable, because we do not have a time machine to go back and test things. Evolution must fall into this second category. Therefore, the alleged event, when non-living molecules got together to form a living cell, cannot be repeated. Evolution is not testable, and is therefore not Operational Science. Some might point out that biblical creation is similarly untestable, and must be Historical Science. Although this is true, it merely serves to remind us that science is not the ultimate test of truth. The revelation of our Magnificent Creator God’s word in the Bible is that ultimate truth!!! |
| 7/13/2022 | While the Bible teaches us that sex is a wonderful gift of God, evolutionists believe that sexual reproduction should not have evolved. According to evolutionists, if sexual reproduction were to develop, evolution is supposed to get rid of it. To make matters worse, immobile plants use sexual reproduction. This creates a problem in transferring the male genes to the female for fertilization. Just to confound things even more, God uses insects and even mammals to transfer the pollen. Since evolutionists believe that plants were around for many millions of years before animals, evolutionists have yet another problem. The European family of the Arum lilies attracts beetles and flies. When one of the insects lands on a flower, he finds a slick, oil-coated surface and ends up sliding down into a chamber filled with small hairs. Imprisoned, he finds a sweet sap that makes good eating. While he is gorging himself on the sap and getting sticky in the process, the male part of the flower showers him with pollen. The next day, the sticky, pollen-coated insect finds that the doors to his prison are open. So he flies off to another flower to unwittingly deliver his load of pollen! It sounds like science fiction to say that a flower figured out how to do this. And it certainly doesn’t sound very scientific to say that nobody designed and made this complex arrangement. As we learn more about these arrangements in nature, it becomes even more clear that an all-wise Magnificent Creator God designed these beautiful, symbiotic relationships between different members of the living kingdom! |
| 7/12/2022 | The yellow-and-black striped archer fish shops among the insects that land on branches overhanging his pond in the peaceful waters of the East Indies. Sometimes he will wait under a branch until something that would make a good lunch lands on it. When the archer fish finds a tasty-looking insect, he shoots an accurately aimed stream of water at his prey, knocking the insect into the water. Before the insect has a chance to recover, the archer fish has eaten him and is looking for dessert. The archer fish has a deep groove in his mouth. When he places his tongue against this groove, he ends up with a blow tube that is about 1/16-inch in diameter. Compressing his gills forces pressurized water through the blow pipe. The rounded tip of the archer fish’s tongue acts as a valve so the fish can shoot a few small bursts or one long stream of water at his prey. The archer fish seldom misses if his prey is within four feet. This simple but elegant arrangement is testimony to a wise and skillful Creator. Neither mindless chance evolution nor any fish could be smart enough to design this system. Nor could any fish redesign his normal mouth tissues into this unique tool. Here we see that our Magnificent Creator God even cares about providing the needs of a fish. We know that He cares even more about our lives! In fact, He has said so! |
| 7/11/2022 | “And the LORD God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It’s behind your refrigerator and under your bed. It’s part of the air you breathe. While dust is common, it’s not commonplace at all. Much of the dust in our everyday lives is nothing more than tiny particles of skin, clothing, carpeting – just pieces of everyday life floating in the air. Studies of dust particles reveal that most dust is soil. However, a second common dust – even a thousand miles from the sea – is salt, driven into the wind by the waves. This salt helps form the clouds that bring us rain. The next most common forms of natural dust are volcanic eruptions and forest fires. Transatlantic winds pick up the dust of the Sahara and sweep it across the ocean where enough of it lands in Miami to sometimes give the rain a light pink color. Not only does your home have dust from all over the world, there’s probably also some from outer space. Ten thousand tons of disintegrating meteorites and comets rain down on the Earth every year. You can even identify some of this dust by running a magnet through the dust in a rain gutter. Most of the magnetic particles that stick to the magnet are probably from space. In addition, some dust is alive, made up of pollen, fungus spores and even dormant bacteria, hoping to land on a good place to grow. Dust reminds us that the world is smaller than we think and that it won’t last forever. Are you ready for the next world? All your preparations have been made by Jesus Christ. Find out in the Bible what our Magnificent Creator God has done for you today!!! |
| 7/10/2022 | It was first discovered in 1855, but many scientists debated its existence for another 50 years. Once its existence was finally proven to everyone’s satisfaction, it was another 50 years before science had any tools to begin studying it. Finally, in the late 1980s, scientists began to learn a little about the secrets of one of the tiniest, yet most amazing structures in the body. At the back of the eye, between the deepest layer of the retina and the cells beneath it, lies a tiny moat made up of about 10 drops of a mysterious fluid. The entire moat is thinner than a sheet of cellophane. It seems that the clear fluid in the moat serves the surrounding light-sensing tissues of the eye in place of blood, bringing in nutrients and carrying away waste. It also transports light-sensitive chemicals needed by the light-detecting cells in the eye. In addition, it seems to glue the retina in place. More than that, the moat is rich in a growth factor. This fact makes scientists believe that the gel may also be important to repairing injuries to the retina, keeping the cells of the retina young and active, as well as helping in the growth of new cells. As one researcher said, the more they study this tiny structure, the more unexpected abilities they find – something like a bottomless suitcase. Charles Darwin, who didn’t even know about the moat, was right when he said that it was impossible to believe that natural selection by our Magnificent Creator God could have produced the eye!!! |
| 7/9/2022 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how our Magnificent Creator God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of a Creator and not mindless, natural accidents. |
| 7/8/2022 | “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.” Many secular cosmologists believe that the universe came into existence in a singularity, as a result of a quantum event about 14.7 billion years ago. However, this so-called Big Bang theory is not without its problems. Principle among these is the Horizon Problem, which refers to the fact that Big Bangers cannot account for the Cosmic Microwave Background being the same temperature in all directions. This phenomenon would have required different parts of the universe coming to thermal equilibrium by radiation moving at the speed of light. Yet the maximum distance this radiation could travel is considerably less than the size of the universe. In the 1980s, theoretical physicist Alan Guth proposed the Inflation Theory. In this model, a very rapid expansion of the universe happened from 10-36 seconds to 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang event. This allowed the entirety of the universe to be in close contact for a while, enabling transfer of energy between all parts of the universe. There is no scientific evidence for this inflation, which is sometimes called the Big Fizz. The extremely short timescale of the event, at the beginning of a period of extremely deep time, gives the whole theory an impression of being a convenient construction, just to make the math work. Moreover, it creates new problems of its own. There are several different models of inflation, and recent work suggesting that evidence for inflation is now available, turns out simply to disprove some of the models, without validating the concept itself. As biblical creationists, we know that none of these models are correct. Our Magnificent Creator God has explained how and why the universe was created in the first chapter of the Bible!!! |
| 7/7/2022 | Outer space has a temperature. It has become common to think of space as a vacuum, that has nothing in it, which means it would be at absolute zero temperature. In fact, space is nearly a vacuum, but not quite. And the particles in that near vacuum are in motion, so they have a temperature of 2.73K—the equivalent of 2.73 Celsius degrees above Absolute Zero. This so-called Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (or CMB) has been known about since 1965. It is assumed to be an echo of the Big Bang, and is offered in High School textbooks as a proof of the Big Bang. Yet, it is actually problematic for Big Bang cosmologists. CMB is the same temperature in all directions of space. For this to have occurred, there must have been a transfer of heat energy in the past, by radiation, from hot spot to cold spot, in order to even out temperature differentials. This radiation would travel at the speed of light. Since Big Bang cosmologists assume the universe to be 14.7 billion years old, it follows that this radiation could only travel a maximum of 14.7 billion light years. But the universe is much bigger than that. Therefore, the Big Bang theory cannot explain the regular, even temperature of CMB. The Bible suggests in Genesis 1:6-8 that there is water at the edge of the universe, which could act as a blackbody, absorbing heat radiation, and neatly accounting for the regularity of the temperature of space. The Bible helps provide an explanation for a phenomenon, which remains a mystery for evolutionary cosmologists but was all just a minor part of our Magnificent Creator God’s Master Plan!!! |
| 7/6/2022 | Wood will get waterlogged, if it is left in water for too long. And yet wood has often been used throughout history to build boats and ships. For example, the city of Pensacola, Florida, was, in many ways, the birthplace of the US Navy, because of the deep harbor, and the abundance of live oaks, from which to build ships. To prevent water-logging, the wood must be treated, to make it waterproof. In this regard, the Ark was no different. So God told Noah to coat the Ark inside and out with pitch. There have been many discussions on what this pitch could actually have been. Could it have been like modern pitch, which is a fractional product of petroleum oil? How could such a material have existed before the Flood, if we believe that fossil fuels were formed during the Flood? More important than this discussion, however, is what the purpose of the pitch was. It was a covering. The Hebrew word is khafar, and means “covering”. Khafar is a common word in the Old Testament—but everywhere else it is found, it is translated by the word “atonement”! Atonement refers to the covering of our sins, making us right with God. The Ark was waterproofed against the watery judgment of God by the atonement of pitch. As believers, we are fireproofed against the fiery judgment of God to come, by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, which does not just cover our sins, but washes them away completely. Our Magnificent Creator God included everything He formed in His Master Plan before the beginning of time!!! |
| 7/5/2022 | In 2 Peter 2:5, the apostle remarks, almost parenthetically, that “[God] did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.” Noah was a herald of righteousness—someone proclaiming the Good News! Building the Ark was very public. We can conjecture that Noah could have contracted labor and materials, and so there would have been conversations. Peter labeled Noah as a herald of righteousness was made under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so he must be referring to actual utterances or conversations, even though these are not reported in Genesis. What could this message of righteousness have been? We know, from the account of Noah’s drunkenness in Genesis 9, that he was not a perfect man. But Hebrews 11 reminds us that Noah “became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7). His righteousness came by faith. But what was the source of that faith? Scripture does indeed record this; in Genesis 6:8 we read “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8 NKJV). To summarize, Noah was saved by grace, through faith. And that is how people are saved today. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). That is the Good News from our Magnificent Creator God, of which all we believers should be heralds!!! |
| 7/4/2022 | For many, the existence of so much ice on Antarctica is a grave cause for concern, as they have been told that climate change will cause a lot of this ice to melt and cause the sea level to rise. The worry is that many of the world’s great cities, and many small island nations, could disappear as the Antarctic melts. So why did God make such a troublesome continent which could precipitate the end of the world? Remember that the topography of the world is not the way it was originally created. We have explained previously that there was likely just one main pre-Flood continent, which we call Rodinia. This continent split up during the Flood. The massive deposits of fossil fuels known to exist on the southernmost continent are evidence of pre-Flood forests, probably populated with animals. Every time ice breaks off from an Antarctic glacier, the media worry about flooding – yet God has promised not to flood the world again, nor to bring seasons to an end. Despite seeming to be a homogeneous repository for the 70% of the Earth’s fresh water, locked in as ice, there are considerable variations in climate between different parts of the continent. For every place where ice is melting and breaking up, there are parts where the ice cap gets thicker. Our Magnificent Creator God has all this in balance for His own purposes, and we can be sure He will keep all His promises!!! |
| 7/3/2022 | Humpbacks are among the largest whales in the world. A typical humpback weighs about 40 tons and begins its breach deep down in the ocean. Imagine the acceleration required to get this enormous animal out of the water and into the air. The whale leaves the water at an angle of 30° and a speed of 18 mph. Clearly, this monster uses a lot of energy in breaching, yet it is not unknown for the whale to repeat the exercise – the observed record being 130 leaps in 90 minutes! Why does it go to all this trouble? No one really knows. As with all such obscure phenomena, there are those who suggest that the whales are trying to “attract the girls”! Others suggest that the big splash achieved on re-entry rips some of the barnacles off the whale’s surface. There may be truth in either of these suggestions. But Wilson says that he cannot overlook the probability that the whale breaches simply because it gives our Magnificent Creator God pleasure! He is a creative God, and the world He made is not for utility only, but also for beauty! |
| 7/2/2022 | There are a number of blurry, indistinct, cloudy-looking objects in the night sky which are not pinpoints of light as the stars are. One hundred ten of these are the so-called Messier objects, which were cataloged by one Charles Messier – a French astronomer who lived from 1730 through 1817. These are a mixture of objects. Some of them we would now call nebulae – quite literally, nebulous clouds of interstellar dust and gas. Examples of these are M8 – the Lagoon Nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius, and M42 – the famous Orion Nebula. Others are star clusters, such as The Pleiades, in Taurus – an object mentioned in the Bible, which is cataloged as M45. Still others are actually other galaxies, such as M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, or M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Why did Messier catalog such a wide variety of different objects without commenting on their differentiation? The answer is that he wasn’t actually interested in those objects. He cataloged them, rather, as a police officer catalogs data from a possible suspect in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. Messier was interested in comets – which also, from a distance, look like blurry objects. The difference is that comets, being Solar System objects, move from night to night, whereas his cataloged objects appear fixed relative to the stars. The Hebrew word for star includes what we call stars today and other objects, such as Messier’s objects. All were made by our Magnificent Creator God and declare His glory!!! |
| 7/1/2022 | Out of more than 30,000 species of spiders, there are three species that make their living through thievery. That number was recently raised from two with the discovery of a tiny, thieving species on the island of Taiwan. The other two species live in South America and are known to steal only silk from the webs of other spiders. This strange little spider from Taiwan which steals much more than just silk and is described as looking like a tiny drop of mercury with legs attached. It preys on the webs of giant wood spiders, whose webs can be more than three feet across. Many spiders eat their own webs for the purpose of recycling the silk to repair a tattered web. But this newly discovered little thief eats the webs of the giant wood spider. Researchers say that these little spiders can, on the average, make a wood spider’s web 21 percent smaller. They have also been seen stealing small insects from the wood spiders’ web as well as wood spider eggs. They are able to do this because they are small and rather sneaky. They do spin their own webs when they are ready to lay eggs, and they also spin their own silk to cover their eggs. While it is wrong for us to steal, theft is apparently the way our Magnificent Creator God has chosen to feed these spiders in a fallen world. That our world is corrupted by our own sin should remind us that God is our ultimate provider. He has even prepared forgiveness and eternal life for us through the holy life and innocent suffering and death of His own Son, Jesus Christ!!! |
| 6/30/2022 | Would you like to be able to walk on water the way Jesus did? The closest human beings have come to walking on water is water skiing, which some even do without skis. But they still need a powerful and noisy power boat to do it. But there is an animal that can walk on water without help of any kind. The basilisk lizard is yet another tribute to God’s unlimited creativity, knowledge and power. Basilisk are found from Mexico to Ecuador and are equally at home in the trees, on the ground and in and on the water. The basilisk is an excellent climber and can outrun any enemy on the ground. Since its back legs are proportionately longer than its front legs, when it needs extra speed, it can run just on its back legs. It runs so fast that it can run across the surface of a body of water that’s up to 100 feet wide. That’s impressive for a creature that can reach two feet in length! Skin flaps on both sides of its back toes, as well as scale fringes on the toes, help the basilisk to stay on the surface. Should the basilisk run into danger while crossing the water, it sinks beneath the surface and either swims or runs along the bottom in a different direction. The lizard is able to stay underwater for several hours. While the basilisk’s method of walking on water is different from our Lord’s, its abilities come from the same Magnificent Creator God. This lizard shows the wisdom and power of God to do things that seem impossible to us, including giving forgiveness of sins and eternal life to us through His Son Jesus Christ! |
| 6/29/2022 | What did God have in mind when He created the human male? The world around us offers many images of what it means to be a “real man.” The world offers us the breadwinner, the tough-guy and the workaholic’s unending push for success. Also, it’s becoming increasingly universal that it is the woman who holds the family together. We can be sure that none of these images capture what God had in mind. If we want to learn some practical lessons about what God intended a man to be, we need to begin with God’s original creation of the first man. The first job given to Adam, the first man, was an intellectual task – identifying and naming the animals. Jesus Christ taught us to call God “our Father.” However, we shouldn’t make the mistake of comparing Him to our imperfect human fathers. Human fathers need to learn from God. What kind of father is He? He’s tough. However, toughness does not mean hurling thunderbolts. True toughness is best shown when love persists despite rejection and disobedience. God never tired of patiently seeking Saul of Tarsus, His sworn enemy. However, while He is loving, God is not a wimp. He has established absolutes that we can depend on. He always keeps His Word. We can be thankful for that because when we look at ourselves we know that we have not been the men or women He intended us to be. His Word of grace in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ assures all who cling to Christ that the perfect and almighty Magnificent Creator God is truly our Father! |
| 6/28/2022 | Numerous television programs have been made about the Komodo dragon and the creatures are even going on display at some zoos. Reaching up to 400 pounds, they can even outrun a man. And they eat anything that they find dead or alive. Even a simple bite from a dragon will prove fatal within 72 hours unless you get immediate treatment. That’s because its saliva contains 52 different deadly strains of bacteria that will produce blood poisoning. Its jagged, inch‑long teeth make a tearing wound that ensures that plenty of poison will be delivered to your system. Even if you were bitten and escape, the Komodo dragon will be able to smell you from two miles away when its poison takes effect. These facts may lead some to ask not only why God made such a creature, but why He has preserved them to this day? Besides demonstrating variety in God’s creation, the Komodo dragon may eventually save more lives than it has ever taken. When the dragon eats, its teeth tear its own gums, exposing its blood to those toxic bacteria. But the dragon never gets infected. Scientists have learned why. They have identified a protein molecule in its blood stream that kills all those toxic bacteria in its saliva. That protein is now being tested on mice. It could well be that the Komodo dragon has shown us the path to a super antibiotic that could treat the blood poisoning that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. If so, this creature will again glorify our Magnificent Creator God by giving us an important medical advance! |
| 6/27/2022 | Americans lead the industrialized world in belief in creationism and a literal Bible. A recent study by a University of Cincinnati compares American’s belief in a recent creation and the truth of the Bible with beliefs in other countries. The study found that 45 percent of Americans believe that God created the world less than 10,000 years ago. Another 40 percent try to mix God and evolution. Only ten percent believe in atheistic evolution. In comparison, only seven percent of the citizens of Great Britain take the Genesis account of creation literally. Surveys of people in Norway, Russia and the Netherlands produced results similar to Great Britain. Interestingly five percent of the physical scientists polled in the United States believe the account of creation as taught in the Bible. The study concluded that America is losing its scientific competitiveness because so many Americans believe in creation and the truth of the Bible. But scientific progress has come about because historically scientists believed that we live in an ordered creation that follows the rules imposed on it by a Creator. They saw science as the discovery of God’s order. Isaac Newton wrote more Bible commentaries than he did scientific books. Taking the Bible literally, he concluded that the earth was less than 7,000 years old. Other examples from history could be multiplied. But the lesson of human history is that true scientific progress is possible only when man recognizes that all knowledge and wisdom comes from our Magnificent Creator God though the Scriptures He has given us! |
| 6/26/2022 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109°23´ and an acute angle of 70°23´. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Magnificent Creator God. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder God has given them so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness! |
| 6/25/2022 | Deserts are inhospitable places with little rain—blazingly hot by day and chillingly cold by night. Few plants can survive, but the rock morning glory can. It has large underground tubers resembling sweet potatoes that store water whenever it rains. In times of drought, it’s sustained by the water stored in its twenty or so underground reserves. Jeremiah 17:8 says of those who put their confidence in God: “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”. Our Magnificent Creator God can overcome any issues when adapting His Creation to this world!!! |
| 6/24/2022 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by their Magnificent Creator God! |
| 6/23/2022 | Will the mammoth walk the earth again? At one time, herds of these giant creatures, which stand 10 to 12 feet tall at the shoulder, covered North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. In late 1999, Russian and American scientists excavated a buried, frozen mammoth in Northern Siberia. Once excavated, the mammoth was airlifted, using Russia’s largest helicopter, to Siberian ice caves that were fashioned into a laboratory. There the frozen mammoth was studied to see if either sperm, or DNA could be extracted from it. This is not as fantastic as it sounds. A mammoth calf that was found in 1977 was found to have intact red blood cells. In 1978, DNA was first extracted from another mammoth. Researchers hope that they can extract intact sperm from the male they are now studying and use it to fertilize an elephant’s egg. The result would be half mammoth and half elephant. If scientists can extract intact DNA another possibility opens up. The DNA can be inserted in an emptied elephant egg and the egg induced to divide. The result of this procedure would be pure mammoth of the Mammuthus species, one of six or seven known species. Scientists are able to use elephants in this work because there is only a five percent genetic difference between the two creatures. If mammoths again walk among us, these huge creatures will glorify the Magnificent Creator God Who originally created them. They will add to the diversity of life we see around us that glorifies God’s power and creativity. |
| 6/22/2022 | We all know that we each started out as a single cell in our mother’s womb. Then those cells began to divide and within 21 days we had a working nervous system and a beating heart. How did all those new cells know how to hook up to each other to knit together our nerve connections? How do other cells know to hook up with each other to make our circulatory system, or form the heart? A fascinating new theory has now been proposed, based on the fact that every cell in your body has the same active genes that your nose uses to enable you to smell. Known as olfactory genes, these genes have no known reason to be active in every one of your cells. Mammals and humans have more than a thousand different olfactory genes. One or another of these crisscrosses each of your cell seven times. Researchers already know that these genes were crucial to the development of your sense of smell as you formed in your mother’s womb. As you formed, the nerve cells in your nose sent out growths, called axons, toward your brain. Each of those axons finally grew into the part of the brain called the olfactory bulb. Once there it hooked up with the cell designed to sense the specific scent detectable by the nerve cell in your nose that sent it out. It has now been proposed that olfactory genes are active in every one of our cells because this same method of wiring our noses for smell is used to link all our cells as we form in the womb. If so, this system of knitting our unborn bodies together is an elegant and precise product of a loving Magnificent Creator God. You weren’t put together by chance or by mindless forces!!! |
| 6/21/2022 | Scientists now know that plants seem to have pain and alarm responses similar to humans and animals. Of course, we don’t know if plants have feelings as we know them. But when a plant is injured, it produces a chemical called jasmonic acid. This acid produces a vapor, similar to the jasmine in commercial perfumes, that is sensed by surrounding plants. They, in turn respond to the signal. When humans feel pain it is due to chemicals totally unrelated to jasmonic acids. As we all know, aspirin is important to pain management for many people. Aspirin works by disabling the chemicals that cause our pain. Now scientists have discovered that aspirin also works to shut down a plant’s response to injury. Aspirin shuts off the plant’s production of jasmonic acid, even though jasmonic acid is not at all similar to human pain‑causing chemicals. More amazingly, aspirin’s chemical reaction is of the same kind in plants and humans. So the next time you accidentally injure your favorite house plant, it might appreciate a small dose of aspirin! While we can be thankful that God placed substances in the creation which help us manage pain, we should never forget that nothing in this creation can deal with the underlying cause of pain. Only Jesus Christ, our Magnificent Creator God, can bring healing from our sinful condition that results in both spiritual and physical pain!!! |
| 6/20/2022 | The huge gaseous ball, the sun, converts around four million tons of hydrogen into energy every second. And it has been doing that every second for thousands of years and continues to do so. It is releasing energy right now. Whether you are asleep, awake, at work, or at play…the sun’s energy is pouring forth. Its energy is (for all practical purposes), never-ending. Think of our Magnificent Creator God’s grace and mercy the same way. Because God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), His grace and mercy are extended on a never-ending basis. Right now, you are receiving benefits “according to the riches of His grace.” You can’t receive God’s grace by your senses. But your mind can understand that His grace came to you, is coming to you, and will come to you for all your days. The same grace that allowed you to be saved is also now building you up and keeping you from falling!!! |
| 6/19/2022 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by their Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error. This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty! |
| 6/18/2022 | We have all looked in wonder at the amazing transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. However, did you realize that a moth needs an entirely different kind of brain than a caterpillar? We can truly say that here we have an insect with two brains! In the caterpillar stage, the moth lumbers around in a body that is primarily designed for eating. Its brain must be able to command powerful jaws and a comparatively huge digestive system as well as the complexities of caterpillar locomotion. The world of the caterpillar is very different from the world of the moth. During metamorphosis the caterpillar completely dissolves and the moth is rebuilt from the liquid. The brain, for example, requires new nerve cells and new connections between brain cells, while some brain cells change function, migrate to new locations, or even die. The result is a brain that is 10 times the size of the caterpillar’s and ready to control flight. The moth’s primary purpose in life is to reproduce. So its new brain is able to generate the odors used by moths to identify and communicate with potential mates. It is also equipped to detect the scents of a potential mate. Only our almighty Magnificent Creator God could completely rebuild a caterpillar into a moth. Only He could rebuild and increase its brain ten-fold in only a week or two. Even more amazing is how He remakes people. Through the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ turns us from people who wish to escape Him to new creatures who love Him and find joy in Him. |
| 6/17/2022 | Two strange species of orchids are among the rarest flowers in the world. These unconventional plants live their entire lives underground, even flowering underground. Most often, their flowers never break the surface of the ground. One of these species, Cryptanthemus, has been found only three times in this century. Only 150 flowering Rhizanthella plants have ever been found. Since they live in the dark underground, neither orchid has any need for chlorophyll or leaves. Each looks like nothing more than a white, waxy root. Rhizanthella produces a flower that is initially white, but which turns purplish as it ages. Its fragrance has been described as delicate and sweet. Cryptanthemus produces a candelabra flower stalk that has several white flowers with small red splotches. The flowers remain almost an inch under the soil. Both species begin life in the same way as most orchids. The orchid seeds germinate when threads of a fungus invade the embryo and form coils within the seed. At this point, other orchids grow leaves so they can make their own food. But these underground orchids continue to live in a symbiotic relationship throughout their entire lives, being fed by the fungus. The wonders of our Magnificent Creator God’s creative handiwork never cease to amaze us. But God’s greatest creation is a redeemed believer in Jesus Christ, a creation He does not want hidden!!! |
| 6/16/2022 | The creation is filled with plants and animals which use deception to survive. The glow‑in‑the‑dark cookie-cutter shark is a master at such deception. The cookie-cutter shark is only a foot to a foot‑and‑a‑half long. It doesn’t have powerful muscles and can’t swim very fast. But it doesn’t need to. Lunch serves itself. The shark typically lives between 600 and 3,000 feet below the surface of the water. Looking down from above one of these sharks, you would probably not see it because the top of its body is as dark as the deep waters where it lives. Looking up from below, you wouldn’t see the dark outline of the shark against the light that filters down from the surface. This is because of the shark’s first deception: its underside is completely covered with light‑emitting cells that match the illumination from above. The deception doesn’t stop there, however. A small patch beneath the shark’s jaw doesn’t glow. From beneath, the cookie-cutter shark looks like a small fish, just the kind of dinner a tuna might like. As the tuna speeds toward what it thinks is a small fish, at the last minute the shark turns and takes a bite out of the tuna. Its open, round jaw takes a plug of flesh out of the tuna, hence the name cookie cutter shark. Interestingly, most cookie-cutter shark wounds are not fatal. The fact that the cookie-cutter shark’s form, deceptions and habits all match each other perfectly is not a result of chance, mindless evolution, but of our Magnificent Creator God’s careful design!!! |
| 6/15/2022 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures!!! |
| 6/14/2022 | Someday, instead of having to give a blood sample during your physical exam, the doctor might just ask you for a saliva sample. Saliva is an amazing fluid. Besides helping us moisten and digest food, saliva is able to speed healing and fight bacteria, fungi and viruses. Saliva is chemically almost identical to the clear part of your blood. It even has, in lesser concentrations, the infectious organisms found in your blood. Let’s say, for example that you suddenly find yourself in a stressful situation. The level of the hormone cortisol will increase in your blood in response to the stress. Within 20 minutes, that increase will be evident in your saliva. This means that someday saliva tests may replace blood samples. In the United States, saliva tests have been approved to diagnose AIDS, illegal drugs, periodontal disease, alcohol and premature labor. If the hormone estriol rises in a woman’s blood before 36 weeks of gestation, doctors know that the woman may go into labor prematurely. Saliva testing is also used to check hormone levels in women who are having a difficult time conceiving a child. Other countries have approved a saliva test for hepatitis B. Saliva’s remarkable abilities are a witness to a loving and Magnificent Creator God!!! He knew that we would sin and thus bring disease into the world. So He gave us saliva that, not only defends us against infection but also helps us heal. But the greatest love He has shown us is in sending His Son to give us spiritual healing!!! |
| 6/13/2022 | How small can a living thing be and still be considered alive. Viruses are not considered living things because they cannot reproduce on their own. But now scientists have confirmed the existence of bacterai that are smaller than the largest viruses and yet can reproduce on their own. They call this amazing class of bacteria nanobacteria. They are less that 20 percent the size of normal bacteria. The unusual nanobacteria have some unusual abilities. Normally, cells in the immune system detect a bacterium in the bloodstream, engulf it, and destroy it. But nanobacteria are able to trick immune cells into committing suicide. Luckily, nanobacteria reproduce very slowly. While the average bacteria reproduces once an hour, nanobacteria take three days to double their numbers. But they still do a lot of damage. Researchers have found that nanobacteria are apparently able to build a calcium shell around themselves. It appears that when they enter the bloodstream, they quickly migrate to the kidneys, where they begin building their shells. Researchers investigating whether nanobacteria cause painful kidney stones have reported testing 30 stones so far. Each stone showed antibodies that bind to nanobacteria. The good news is that if nanobacteria are a cause of kidney stones, they can be eradicated with antibiotics. While scientists are unsure of how something so small can be alive, our Magnificent Creator God is able to fashion even these tiny, amazing creatures!!! |
| 6/12/2022 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm!!! |
| 6/11/2022 | We want to avoid getting bacteria in our food, don’t we? Bacteria cause illness. Bacteria are bad. Yet, some of the world’s healthiest foods contain deliberately introduced bacteria. One such strain of bacteria is the Lactic Acid Bacterium (LAB). This is used in foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut. Brassicas, such as cabbage, often have low quantities of this bacterium. When sealed in a suitable fermentation jar with salt, the LAB can thrive. LAB is able to withstand high acidity and salinity, so it grows, even in a salty environment. One of the products of LAB’s metabolism is lactic acid. Most other bacteria cannot survive in either acid or salt, so the LAB begins to dominate, while the vast majority of other bacteria die. LAB itself is not harmful to humans, so, paradoxically, the good bacteria have effectively killed off all the bad bacteria, providing a healthy, long-lasting food. When God finished making the world at the end of day six of creation, He looked at all that He had made and declared it to be very good. This must have included bacteria. Since Adam’s sin, many bacteria have mutated (though not evolved, as they have not gained new genetic information) into harmful organisms. Perhaps originally, all bacteria were created to be as useful as LAB in that original perfect world that God gave us and that we so sinfully polluted. Our Magnificent Creator God can always make something that others may think is bad useful for something good!!! |
| 6/10/2022 | The hunted are smart to stay upwind of the hunter. Many predators hunt using scent, at least in part. The same principle works in water. Many predators smell chemicals given off by their prey and use that scent to help them locate their prey. If you were predator in a stream you would be smart to stay downstream from your prey. The prey won’t smell you. In addition, you might be able to smell him if he gets too close. Amazingly, the little shrimp‑like amphipod seems to be able to smell predators even downstream. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have discovered that amphipods can even smell a brown trout downstream and try to avoid it. Scientists designed an artificial stream that divided into two branches. Down one branch was a brown trout, while no predator waited down the other branch. Then amphipods were placed upstream of the branch and allowed to go downstream. When the amphipods came to the branch, they avoided the branch with the trout. To check whether the amphipods were actually smelling scents from downstream, researchers put trout scents in the downstream water. This was enough to cause the amphipods to avoid that branch. Yet, when trout were placed in one of the downstream branches in glass tubes, keeping their scent from entering the water, the amphipods did not respond to the sight of the trout. We, too, are being hunted as prey by the devil and his forces. We would do well to learn how to sense where the devil lies in wait for us, and like the amphipods, flee from him. Our Magnificent Creator God has endowed us with such a sense that He enables thru the power of The Holy Spirit!!! |
| 6/9/2022 | Wasp colonies in temperate zones usually wait until the end of summer to raise male young. That’s because male wasps are typically useless consumers of food. They don’t do anything worthwhile in the nest, nor do they help gather resources. Female paper wasps often practice what experts call “male stuffing.” When food is brought into the nest, a job carried out by females, other females will stuff their brothers head first into unused nest cells. Needless to say, in the typical nest males have short lives. The first exception to this pattern was recently discovered in Costa Rica. Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle have discovered a species of wasp in which the males are not only in charge, but also, help out in the nest. The female wasps still gather the food, but the males demand and get all they want, even from the queen. But the males were also observed fanning an overheated nest to cool it. They helped remove water during a flood, and they helped take care of the larvae. The males of this species remain with their parent colony for an unusually long time for wasps. Yet, at any time, they can father a new colony. Other tropical species are now being studied to see if this behavior is unique. The Bible teaches that proper authority is respected when it comes from a spirit of servanthood. This pattern seems to extend even to wasps. Our Magnificent Creator God designed our human culture in such a way that it often needs to be reminded of the principle that when males pitch in and help, their leadership will be appreciated and followed!!! |
| 6/8/2022 | When we look at the size of the universe, it sometimes becomes easier to see evolution as credible. After all, when we see galaxies that are said to be billions of light years away, it seems possible that there really have been millions of years. But, in truth, the immensity of space is really not so friendly to evolution’s claim that the universe, and the earth, are billions of years old. The Milky Way Galaxy, like many galaxies, is a spiral galaxy. You have probably seen the illustrations showing spiral arms of stars wrapped around the bright center of our galaxy. The stars closest to the center of our galaxy rotate around the center more rapidly than the stars further out on the spiral arms. When these differences in speed are worked out, we discover that our galaxy, no less our Earth, cannot be billions of years old. If the Milky Way was that old, the spiral arms would have long ago become nothing more than a disc of stars. Evolutionary scientists recognize this problem, calling it “the winding up dilemma.” But they have been unable to come up with an explanation that is satisfactory. As we look at the creation for evidence of its age, the clues we have so far found can only give us a upper limit. They cannot give us an exact age. But even the size of the universe fails to support the idea that the creation is billions of years old. If instead, we piece together the Biblical genealogies, which are really ancient calendars, we arrive at an age for our Magnificent Creator God’s universe of a little more than 6,000 years! |
| 6/7/2022 | “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” One of the most common arguments against a literal six-day creation is that the structure of the days is a literary device, called the Framework Hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests an almost poetic pattern to the days, which they claim demonstrates that the days are not meant to be taken literally. On day one, God made the universe. On day two, He made the seas and atmosphere, and on day three He made the land, with its plants. Then on day four, He filled the universe, day five filled the sea and atmosphere, and day six filled the land. So there are three days of creating ex nihilo and three days of filling those creations. Again, the advocates of this hypothesis maintain that this pattern shows that Genesis 1 is allegorical literature, proclaiming the truth of God as Creator, but does not give a historical account. A quick answer to this point is that if there is a real pattern of two sets of three days, this does not prove that the days are not literal. God is a God of order. However, their neat pattern breaks down. Day one is not actually the parallel to day four – day two is. How so? On day two, God created the firmament, and the firmament refers not merely to the atmosphere but the entirety of space. A better suggestion is to take God at His word, that our Magnificent Creator God created everything exactly how He said He did!!! |
| 6/6/2022 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was the Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language to praise our God and Savior and to tell others who our Magnificent Creator God is and what He has done! |
| 6/5/2022 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! Our Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health!!! |
| 6/4/2022 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by our Magnificent Creator God allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following the Lord’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own! |
| 6/3/2022 | Episodic memory, the ability to remember something that happened in the past is called mental time travel. It has long been thought that only humans are capable of episodic memory. New research suggests that some birds are also capable of mental time travel. Researchers gave captive Western scrub jays wax worms, one of their favorite foods. As they usually do, the jays made their selections and hid the worms in the trays of sand provided. Five days later, the birds were allowed to recover their treats. The jays discovered that after the five days, the worms had begun to decay. The researchers fooled a second batch of jays by replacing their decayed worms with fresh worms just before the birds were allowed to find their treats. Then both batches of birds were again allowed to take and hide a choice of worms. Those birds that had had experience with the decayed worms, would no longer take new worms to hide. But the birds that had been fooled took the worms and buried them, still expecting them to be good later. In other words, the birds remembered what happened in the past and adjusted their behavior. Other tests offered similar results. Our Magnificent Creator God has given all His creatures the abilities they need to make a living without regard to where those creatures are on the manmade evolutionary ladder!!! |
| 6/2/2022 | Our Lord recognized that in a sinful world we must be prepared to protect ourselves. The same is true in the animal and plant world. When it comes to trying to explain this truth using evolutionary thinking, there are some serious difficulties. There are many plants that have effective defenses against the insects that attack them. For example, a plant called Bursera defends itself with poisons that squirt from its leaves when a certain beetle larva attempts to feed on it. However, the larvae have learnt to chew on a particular part of the leaf first. When they do this they disable the plant’s defense system and can munch away on the leaf without fear of harm. According to evolution, the plant’s defense mechanism and the beetle’s countermeasures had to evolve simultaneously: countermeasure perfectly matching defense, otherwise the countermeasure would be quite useless. The probability of this happening, even if evolution was true, is extremely remote. Even evolutionists have realized this problem and have published their attempts to explain how this could happen, but such explanations are based on a complex foundation of evolutionary assumptions and little evidence. According to evolution, such unlikely interrelationships had to evolve by chance many times when one looks at all the defenses that plants use and predators can outsmart. Creationists see these systems as created fully formed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 6/1/2022 | Before the Flood people were living hundreds of years. As man grew more evil, God declared that man’s lifespan would be reduced to 120 years. Modern biology has learned that we do indeed have built-in timers in each of our cells that limit the number of times they can divide. When enough cells can no longer divide, we die. We can even do things to speed up the timers. The timers are called telomeres. However, every time a cell divides, a small part of each telomere is lost. When these telomeres are worn down to nothing, the cell no longer divides and soon dies. Researchers studied 58 healthy women between the ages of 20 and 50. All the women had children, but 39 of them had a child that was seriously chronically ill. Stress levels were measured through questionnaires while blood samples provided information about their cell health. Among other things, scientists checked for levels of an enzyme that maintains the health of telomeres. The mothers who saw their stress levels as high proved to have much shorter telomeres than those who reported little stress. They reported that cells from stressed women had telomeres that were as short as unstressed women ten years older. Scripture tells us to cast all our cares on the Lord. Among the many blessings of doing so are healthy telomeres from Our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/31/2022 | Many marine creatures reflect surrounding light. They can do so because of tiny light-reflecting platelets. Typically, these crystalline platelets are made of purine, one of the building blocks of DNA, but these particular crystals cannot change how much light they reflect. The Hawaiian bobtail squid, however, needs to be able to reflect different levels of light because of its unique lifestyle. This squid glides through moonlit waters but without its special reflective tissue its shadow would be seen as it passes over the bottom. The bobtail squid has light generating tissue on its underside facing the bottom and this produces just sufficient light to make its shadow disappear. In other words, it can generate variable levels of light. What’s more, the squid can move its light-generating platelets around so that they might be scattered among its cells or concentrated where needed. Rather than being composed of just one amino acid, this squid’s platelets are made up of six amino acids. God is the source of all light, including spiritual light. According to evolution, the squid is closely related to some of the first animals that evolved in the sea. Yet, its technically sophisticated camouflage, which perfectly fits its environment and life-style is a testimony to God’s wise design, not the early stages of mindless evolution. The spiritual light of our Magnificent Creator God’s truth makes that clear!!! |
| 5/30/2022 | You get up early. The illumination isn’t very good, you put on your socks anyway, only to find out, in the light of day, that you have one blue and one gray sock on. That’s because our eyes have cone cells to detect color, as well as rod cells that are sensitive to light, but cannot see color. So, as the light level becomes lower, we have a decreasing ability to detect colors. Not so with the hooded gecko. Based on their study of gecko eyes, some scientists wondered whether they could see in the dark. To test this, they made cards with a checkerboard pattern of blues and grays. Geckos were then trained to take crickets labeled with one of the cards. Then, when they offered the geckos crickets labeled with a blue card, they rewarded with the expected cricket. Crickets labeled with gray cards were made bad-tasting by being placed in salt water. During these tests the light level was so low that researchers could not tell the difference between colors. However, the geckos took the crickets labeled with blue cards more than twice as often, proving that they could see the color differences. While we marvel at God’s unlimited creativity in providing for His creatures’ needs, we see this truth by faith. Faith also shows us that our Magnificent Creator God redeemed us through His Son!!! |
| 5/29/2022 | Have you ever considered that fingerprints are an amazing example of how much God cares for us? Each of us is born with a certain arrangement of arches, loops, and whorls on our hands, and they don’t change as we grow or age. They are also exclusive. Think about that for a moment: Out of roughly eight billion people on earth, no two of us have the same fingerprint. We’ve each been uniquely created by God. What’s more, He has a singular plan for every life (Jeremiah 1:5; Proverbs 16:3-4; Proverbs 16:9). There is no such thing as a non-valuable person in God’s eyes—He loves every single one of us equally and is personally involved in seeing His plans for our lives come to fulfillment. In fact, it brings Him joy to do so! So instead of comparing yourself to others or feeling inconsequential, look at the intricacy of your fingertips and remember: You are one of a kind and well-loved by the Magnificent Creator God who brought you into being!!! |
| 5/28/2022 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, our Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. |
| 5/27/2022 | The Bible tells us that the earliest generations of human beings were making music. By the time the eighth generation of man came along, Jubal, a member of that generation was able to make his living providing musical instruments. On the evolutionary side of things, however, musical ability would seem to provide no survival advantage. Yet, the human brain devotes considerable resources to the processing of music. Our love of music is wired into our brain. Each of our sense organs is important to our enjoyment of music. And each of these organs is linked to its own part of the brain which is responsible for how we experience the music. Parts of the brain are reserved for memory which stores the music. Other parts of the brain are dedicated to trying to understand the entire piece of music, referencing back to parts of the music stored in the memory. Even more interesting is that one need not hear music to activate the various parts of the brain devoted to music. Positron-emission tomography reveals that a person only needs to imagine music for these portions of the brain to become active. The ability to make or appreciate music offers us no apparent survival value, and therefore, according to evolutionary theory, should not have developed. Yet, our brains, and indeed, all our senses, are designed to make and appreciate music. The obvious message here is that evolution had nothing to do with the formation of human beings. We were created by a Magnificent Creator God Who loves music, and wants us to praise Him with music!!! |
| 5/26/2022 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Creator. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Put the brain our Magnificent Creator God gave you together with the Word of God today! |
| 5/25/2022 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that anyone but our Magnificent Creator God could have created these creatures!!! |
| 5/24/2022 | For centuries, Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that He had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord – our Magnificent Creator – is the beginning of all wisdom. |
| 5/23/2022 | The bacterium Bacillus cereus likes to live in soil that would kill most other bacteria. It’s bothered neither by lethal concentrations of metal nor natural antibiotics. The bacterium is commonly found in the soil. However, in soil that overlays metal deposits like gold and copper, there may be 100,000 times as many cereus as normal. Soil over such deposits picks up a metallic content from the mineral below. If the metallic content is high enough, only a few plants, metal-tolerant fungi, and cereus can live in the soil. To make matters worse, the metal-tolerant fungi make penicillin and other antibiotics in concentrations high enough to kill bacteria. But none of this fazes cereus. How can cereus survive under conditions that would kill any other known bacteria? Researchers believe that cereus performs some sophisticated chemistry that detoxifies the metal and makes the penicillin harmless at the same time. For example, in the case of copper, they believe that cereus removes a water molecule from the penicillin molecule. The resulting gap in the penicillin molecule traps metallic molecules in the soil and makes them harmless. They suspect that cereus may use different sophisticated strategies to deal with different metals. As one of the scientists pointed out, each cereus seems to be genetically coded for its unique location. Cereus may be only a bacterium, but its clever chemistry and unique individuality bear witness to both our Magnificent Creator’s supreme intelligence and His care for each of His creatures!!! |
| 5/22/2022 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator! |
| 5/21/2022 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen, the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. Our Magnificent Creator has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. |
| 5/20/2022 | What can be more appealing, than the sight of a cherry tree in full bloom? Cherry blossom seems to enhance every environment, of which it is a part. Even urban areas can play host to cherry trees, and concrete city can be made attractive for a while, when the blossoms appear. Cherry blossom is often fleeting. Many varieties are in bloom for no more than 2 weeks of the year. But for those two weeks, they burst into an explosion of pink, followed by a ground covering of pink snow. It is often forgotten how much energy a plant uses, in producing flowers and blossoms. Though cherry blossoms are small, there are a lot of them. The colors they reflect, and the aromas released, are attractive to the insects necessary for pollination. But what an awkward method of reproduction pollination sometimes seems to be. The male pollen cells need to travel from the anthers of the flowers on one cherry tree, to the stigma of another. To attract the right pollinator, the blossoms must be the right color, and the right size. But why would they have evolved this way, if the insects were not originally pollinating these flowers? Whichever way you cut it, the burst of energy needed to produce the annual cherry blossoms is not explicable without presupposing the truth of God’s word. But God made everything in six days, so the inexplicable becomes logical. Like the stars of the heavens, bright flowers tell forth the glory of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/19/2022 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workmanship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation. |
| 5/18/2022 | Roman Vishniac is a renowned photographer of microscopic scenes. One of his favorite subjects is one of the so-called simplest forms of life. This “simple” life, the protozoan, is supposedly the ancestor of all living things. However, Vishniac has noted that the protozoan is neither simple nor archaic in character. This creature carries out all the functions of life that we require millions of cells to sustain—all within a single cell. There is a parallel in technology. The first adding machines were large and heavy contraptions. As these mechanical adding machines became smaller, they had to be more cleverly designed because they were smaller. The first electronic calculators were even smaller and lighter than their mechanical brothers. But they were still much larger and simpler than calculators today. As calculators have decreased in size, they have had to be more cleverly designed because they are smaller. Vishniac has learned that the so-called “simple” one-celled creatures are not simple at all. This is because they must carry out the business of life within the limits of their small size. This has not swayed him from evolution. However, this fact has convinced him that current theories are wrong. You see, evolution is in trouble if there are no “simple” forms of life. We believe that this clear evidence that there are no simple forms of life—evidence powerful enough to sway the experts—supports the Bible’s claim that all forms of life were created in finished form by a wise Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/17/2022 | We are beginning to discover more about how Neanderthal people were not primitive subhuman cavemen, as popular-style evolutionary documentaries show. Instead, they were actually fully human – and the evidence for this is so conclusive that even serious evolutionists accept the fact today. It appears that Neanderthals cooked. They didn’t just eat raw or burnt meat. It appears that food remains were seasoned with herbs. They also used nuts and legumes, among other plant-based edibles. Perhaps they were familiar with the Keto Diet! Those interested in natural remedies often recommend using certain tree barks as an infusion or just chewed, as a painkiller. This is because such barks – I use willow bark – are a source of salicylic acid, which is closely related to aspirin. It has even been found that Neanderthals consumed the mold penicillium, which we now know produces the well-known antibiotic penicillin. Their clothing included furs, required to combat European conditions during the post-Flood Ice Age. But they also seemed to wear pendants and other jewelry. An excellent, recent article in Creation magazine by Robert Carter and Lita Cosner, gives links to scientific papers on these and other civilizing traits attributed to Neanderthals. Though the authors are not Bible-believing Christians, their article reminds us that Neanderthals, being human, were descended from Adam through Noah, just as we are. |
| 5/16/2022 | When we compare ourselves with many of the other living things on this Earth, our abilities are not very impressive. A camel can carry 1,000 pounds 30 miles through the desert every day. As a human being, I become tired even thinking about walking 30 miles with empty pockets. The ostrich can run at 30 miles per hour, faster than my car might go during rush hour. The Indian swift can fly at more than 100 miles per hour. The elephant’s trunk has 40,000 muscles. This is 70 times the number of muscles in your entire body. Yet, his trunk can bulldoze a tree or pick up a pin. Many of us can’t do either one on the first try. The flea can jump 350 times its own length, a total of 13 inches. This is equivalent to our jumping 2,000 feet into the air. Most of us can’t jump more than two feet off the ground. As it works out, 13 inches is just about right if you are looking for a nice warm dog on which to raise a family. A tiny insect called the midge beats its wings an amazing 133,000 times per minute. That’s a hundred times faster than you can blink your eye. Humans can use their superior intellect to build the machines they need. With those machines, they can outdo any one of these creatures. But God simply made a gift to the animals of the specialized abilities they needed. God expects us to follow His example and design and build what we need. If we look carefully, we will see that our Magnificent Creator God has given us all the materials and all the ideas we need within the creation. No one can say that He does not care what we do with our lives on Earth!!! |
| 5/15/2022 | Scientists have not even been able to chart the size of the known physical universe. There is a photo called the XDF (eXtreme Deep Field) that was put together from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over the course of ten years. It shows a vast number of galaxies, each comprising billions of stars like our sun. Our sun is 93 million miles away from the earth. And the galaxies are very, very far apart—Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our own, is 2.2 million light years away. To give an idea of how far that is, a shuttle traveling at 18,000 miles per hour would need 37,200 years to travel one light year. The universe is absolutely huge—and our Magnificent Creator God created it all – just by speaking it into existence!!! |
| 5/14/2022 | Have you ever thought what a strange material water actually is? A water molecule comprises of three atoms – two hydrogens and one oxygen. Oxygen is an element in Group VI of the Periodic Table; Group VI also contains the elements sulfur, selenium, and tellurium, in increasing order of size (oxygen is the smallest. Hydrogen can also form compounds with these elements: H2S, H2Se, H2Te. These have the boiling points -60.7, -41.5, and -2.2deg Celcius. Therefore, all these compounds are gases at room temperature. If we were following the size of the Group VI atom only, then water should have a boiling point considerably lower than that of H2S. But it doesn’t. In fact, the boiling point of water is higher than all those other compounds, at 100 deg C (or 212 deg F). This, of course, is not the only anomalous property of water. The solid form of water – ice – floats on liquid water. So what, you might say. Well, the solid form of every other liquid there is always sinks in its liquid. If you have ever allowed molten candle wax to cool down, for example, you will notice it freezes from the bottom up. Nearly all liquids behave that way – except water! In short, the most common liquid in the world – the one that we require most for life – behaves like no other liquid. It is almost as if it were specially designed! Our Magnificent Creator God designed the Earth – including water – for us to inhabit!!! |
| 5/13/2022 | You have 30,000,000,000,000 individual cells in your body. That’s thirty trillion, and you have about two hundred different types of cells, including red blood cells, skin cells, nerve cells (neurons), and fat cells. Each type of cell performs a vital role in keeping your body healthy. As amazing as it seems, the average human body makes between two and three million new red blood cells every second. Oh, how we want each of our thirty trillion cells to be devoted to Jesus. We’re to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. As amazing as our incredibly-designed bodies are, we also have minds, personalities, and spirits. And we have gifts, talents, abilities, and strengths. The Lord gave you the wonderful workmanship of YOU so you could serve Him. Today, present your body to Him as a living sacrifice and let your life be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which happens as you meditate on His Word. Let Him be Lord of all there is of you. We are more than the chemicals that form our body. We are a special creation of God. Man is our Magnificent Creator God’s masterpiece—His workmanship, the crown of creation!!! |
| 5/12/2022 | It comes as quite a surprise to discover that the word locust does not actually indicate any separate species. Locusts are really just grasshoppers, but the term refers to their well-known swarming behavior. Under normal conditions, locusts are solitary insects. In normal times, they cause little or no problem to agriculture. But sometimes, conditions are not normal. After times of drought, the locusts seem to produce far more nymphs than would be normal. These then begin to swarm as the insects suddenly become gregarious. These swarms of locusts cause terrible problems for agriculture. In swarming conditions, the insects turn to eating crops and can devastate whole fields in short order. The transformation seems to be caused by increased body concentrations of serotonin, and this, in turn, is produced when there are multiple touches of the hind legs by other locusts, caused by overcrowding. Towards the end of 2019 and into 2020, large swarms of locusts affected parts of Africa and Asia, and these were so large that they brought to mind the plague of locusts in Egypt, mentioned in Exodus. For these reasons, locusts were, in the Bible, a symbol of destruction. In Joel 2:25, we read: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25). The destruction caused is to be reversed by the blessing and favor of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/11/2022 | If you had painful skin, one of the last things you would apply to it would be hot peppers. Not only do hot peppers burn the mouth, some can even blister the skin. Yet in South America, ground hot peppers have been used for centuries to help relieve pain. Scientists have discovered the active ingredient in peppers that relieves skin pain. This substance blocks the pain signals that come from the nerves just under the surface of the skin. The “hot pepper” sauce for skin not only causes no pain, it relieves pain that doesn’t respond to any other treatment. It’s available in creams and ointments that, tests show, relieve pain in two out of three people. Conventional wisdom says that medicines that are found in natural plants were discovered by accident. Someone might accidentally discover a relationship between a person’s having eaten a certain plant and then getting well. They would try the same plants on others with the same disease. If they found that there were more cures, the plant would be remembered as a folk medicine. The “hot pepper” pain reliever for skin tells us that there’s a problem with this theory. People who have a painful skin condition are not likely to apply a pepper sauce. Doing that would be expected to make their skin more painful and cause it to blister. However, it’s possible that our Magnificent Creator God originally gave humans some knowledge of the cures for our ills – cures that He wisely built into creation!!! |
| 5/10/2022 | Scientists are learning that even the lowly bacteria have mind and memory. New research is showing that mind, memory, brain, and personality did not evolve. These can be found in the lowliest of creatures, including the bacteria. Another sign of intelligence in a life form is the ability to learn. Using attracting and repelling substances, scientists have found that bacteria can learn about their surroundings and draw conclusions. Follow-up tests showed that they later remember what they learned. Scientists have even found that younger bacteria learn better than older ones. If some things are not learned when young, they never can be learned! It seems that it’s hard to teach an old bacterium new tricks! The biggest surprise of all came when scientists discovered that bacteria have what the researchers called individual personality. They are mystified about how bacteria, each with the same genetic structure and from the same environment, can develop unique quirks in behavior. Because we find individual personality even in the lowly bacteria, we know that did not evolve. That God would give even a bacterium the gift of personality shows us something about His mind toward us. Nothing is so small or unimportant that it escapes His attention. Since He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from the decay that is in the world because of sin, there is no force too great for Him to overcome. Surely He is a Magnificent Creator God of details as well as a God of love, Who is concerned about every individual among us!!! |
| 5/9/2022 | Many materials in nature give an appearance of design. Consider just a small number of properties of water. It freezes from the top down. We are so used to this, that we forget how unusual it is. All other liquids freeze from the bottom up, but if that happened in ponds and rivers, fish would never be able to survive through winters. Water has a tiny molecular mass, so the molecules can pass through semi-permeable membranes, enabling the movement of water through cell walls, and yet the molecules associate together, held by forces called hydrogen-bonds, so that the melting point and boiling point are much higher than we should expect from the size of the molecules. Of course, there are those who think such properties are coincidental. But these properties, and many others, are precisely what we would expect, given that the world was designed and created by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 5/8/2022 | “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.” Psalm 50:10-12 “If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?” Many of us are used to such accusations from atheists, but, unfortunately, many Christians do not know how to answer the point. Christians would be right to point to Genesis 3 and show that evil came into the world by disobedience – the disobedience of Adam – which polluted the entire world. However, there are some who object to this presentation of the Eden account on the grounds that, if God is a God of love and righteousness, how could He allow evil to happen in this way? This question leads some, incorrectly, to assume that God cannot know for sure what is going to happen in the future. The problem, if such it is, is better resolved by reasoning in biblical categories. Thinking in categories appears to be a lost art. Our error is in judging God by human standards even though God rebukes us, in Psalm 50, declaring: “You thought that I was just like you.” God is not like us, even though we are made in His image. We understand events through the passage of time, but God is transcendent over time. Therefore, to us it appears that God, in His Sovereignty, wills two different things; He permits evil but is not responsible for it – we are. If we do not fully understand this, we remind ourselves that His thoughts are so much higher than ours. His magnificence exceeds anything we can comprehend with our human minds which is why we have faith in an omniscient and omnipotent Magnificent Father!!! |
| 5/7/2022 | When Isaac Asimov wrote his famous robot stories, we all thought we knew what robots looked like. They looked like us. Indeed, many of Asimov’s robots began to look indistinguishable from human beings, such as the iconic R Daneel Olivaw, who partnered with detective Elijah Baley in the sci-fi crime novel The Caves of Steel. As real-life robots began to appear in industry, making cars and operating other machinery, they did not look quite so anthropomorphic. Now in the 21st century, self-mobile robots are not necessarily built to walk like people. For example, we have already seen tiny flying robots about the size and shape of a cockroach – and liable to be just as beloved! A more recent robotic development has seen soft robots built to imitate jellyfish. Two layers of elastic polymer are joined – one stressed and one unstressed. Between the layers, air can be pumped, reversing the stressing and enabling the robot to swim through water. A third stress-free layer provides direction, and the whole machine is able to lift and carry fairly large cargos. The video accompanying the research shows strips of this robotic material being used out of water as a prehensile grip that would have sensitivity approaching that of human hands. As with all new technologies, it is to be hoped that good uses are found for it. God has given us dominion over this world, and technological developments, such as the soft robot, are methods by which humans can operate under this divine mandate. What a Magnificent Creator we serve using the vast array of inventions He has taught us to make!!! |
| 5/6/2022 | Several different animals communicate on a limited basis with one another. But human speech is unique, leaving those who believe in evolution perplexed. The very oldest human fossils show the bony structures needed to support speech. Evolutionists will admit, in a candid moment, that they have no idea how speech could have evolved. One modern researcher said they have only “inferences based on hunches.” Some scientists have observed that human beings come with the built in ability to learn and speak. While this idea is not popular among evolutionists, it is supported by the unique structure of the human vocal tract. No other creature has anything like it. The human larynx is placed low in the throat. That placement creates a sound chamber that allows us to make language expressive. Moreover, the placement prevents us from breathing and eating or drinking at the same time. But we are not born that way. A newborn’s larynx is placed higher up in the throat, allowing a baby to breathe and suckle at the same time. By the time a child is six – and has no need to suckle and breathe at the same time, but is learning language – the larynx has moved to its adult position. This obviously designed arrangement in support of human speech presents only more problems for the evolutionist. But for those who believe in our Magnificent Creator God, it is one more testimony of His wise handiwork!!! |
| 5/5/2022 | In the early 1960s, some unusually blue star-like objects were observed in the universe, giving out radio frequencies along with visible light. There were a number of them. Through telescopes, they appeared to have fuzzy boundaries. They were given the name Quasi-Stellar Radio Sources – and this was quickly abbreviated to quasars. Another odd feature of these objects was the existence, in their spectra, of emission lines, similar to those of stars, but at the “wrong” frequencies. The emission lines in normal stars were known to be due to hydrogen, but the lines in the quasar’s spectrum had a wavelength about 15% longer than that of hydrogen in other stars, or in the laboratory. It was eventually realized that this effect must be due to red shift – but a red shift bigger than anything that had previously been seen. An application of Hubble’s Law – which shows that the red shift is proportional to the object’s distance – showed that the quasar 3C 273 was over 2 billion light years away and was therefore over 100 times more luminous than typical stars within the same cluster. The existence of such amazing objects once again underlines for us how true it is that the heavens declare the glory of God. So many objects have now been discovered that astronomers give them numbers like 3C 273. How interesting it is, then, that the Bible tells us that our Magnificent Creator God knows the actual name of every single astronomical object!!! |
| 5/4/2022 | A number of species of fish live, apparently comfortably, in Antarctic waters as cold as the freezing temperature of seawater, which is a couple of degrees colder than fresh water. This presents us with several mysteries. First, cold slows down the chemistry necessary for life. At these temperatures, life’s chemistry all but stops. Second, from a creation perspective, how could fish created to live in a perfect, warm, comfortable world be able to live in an environment that makes life seemingly impossible? A team of biologists from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station has found some remarkable answers to these questions. The biologists studied an enzyme found in many creatures that changes a compound called pyruvate into lactate within the muscles. In the Antarctic fish this enzyme appears to help this conversion take place at speeds usually only found in warmer creatures. It seems that the cold-water fish have a slight modification of this common enzyme that allows the enzyme to work more quickly, despite the cold. And yes, researchers have also found the same modified version of the enzyme in a South American warm water species. It appears that God’s foreknowledge of what would become of His once perfect world, and His desire to provide for His creatures, led Him to give this special version of this enzyme to creatures of His choosing. If our Magnificent Creator God provides so wisely for fish, will He not provide for you and me, for whom His only Son died? |
| 5/3/2022 | Aerodynamics, the science of flight, is a highly complex science. This is because many complex forces are acting on anything in flight. These forces include the power available for flight and drag produced by the flying object. Each of these categories includes many additional forces that depend on the shape of the flying object, the shape and length of the wings, the speed and the altitude. This is why, for example, high altitude planes have very long wings. One critical force that has been under recent study is the turbulence that forms at the tips of the wings. The shorter the wing, the more energy consuming turbulence forms at the tip of the wing. Different wing designs have been tried to decrease this turbulence. Engineers have had some success reducing this turbulence with winglets. You may have seen these small vertical wings on the wingtips of some airplanes. Swiss researchers have been studying vultures with the hope of finding a better solution to this problem because vultures have a relatively short wingspan that has proven to be surprisingly efficient. They discovered that this is because the feathers at the vultures’ wing tips spread out. They then tested a wing with a finger like cascade of blades at the end. Their new wing was more than four times more efficient than the average wing design in use today! It takes a great deal of faith in evolution to think that natural selection possesses such knowledge of aerodynamics. Clearly the vulture was designed by an intelligent Magnificent Creator who understands aerodynamics even better than we do!!! |
| 5/2/2022 | Shore birds like the oystercatcher search for buried mollusks by touch. They poke around in the sand, hoping to find a hard shelled mollusk. But if you have ever tried to find something that was hiding where you couldn’t see it, you know that this method of looking for something is not very efficient. But another shore bird, the red knot, seems to know just where to find its hidden food. Scientists observed that the red knot, a type of sandpiper, was seven to eight times more efficient at finding buried food than it would be if it were randomly searching. Red knots, who also search for food by pushing their bills into the sand, did better than those birds who search by touch. The answer didn’t come until scientists looked at the red knot’s bill under the microscope. On the top of the bill they found tiny pits. Inside the pits they found cells called Herbst corpuscles. Scientists knew that other shorebirds have organs similar to these corpuscles that are used to feel vibrations from wriggling prey. They theorized that the red knot’s Herbst corpuscles sense pressure changes in the displaced water under the sand when a mollusk obstructs the water’s flow. Next they tested captive birds who were trained to find mollusks in pails of sand. Scientists found that if the sand was dry, the red knots did not do very well. But when the sand was wet, the red knots could indeed find the hidden mollusks. Our Magnificent Creator God’s creative nature and divine wisdom has provided His living creatures with a beautiful variety of ways of making their living!!! |
| 5/1/2022 | Plants make cellulose. Cellulose is a type of natural plastic made of many sugar molecules linked together. Scientists have known for years how to use the natural plastic qualities of cellulose to make things like cellophane and rayon. Scientists have also known that animals generate a similar natural plastic called chitin. Like cellulose, chitin is a carbohydrate made of long chains of sugar molecules. Chitin is found in the shells of all insects and crustaceans, like crabs. Each year the crabmeat industry had thrown away thousands of tons of chitin because scientists couldn’t figure out how to extract chitin from the shells in a usable form. Finally in 1975 scientists discovered how to remove the chitin from shells and change its form so it could be made into whatever forms they needed. Suture thread made from chitin dissolves in the body. This means that stitches don’t have to be removed, and it can be more easily knotted than regular suture thread. Suture thread made from chitin also causes no allergic reaction, and it seems to promote healing. It’s hard to believe that a crab shell, which is usually thrown away, could do so much! Food processing companies are even using a chemical made from chitin to recover protein from wastewater. Almost everything in the creation seems to have numerous uses for human needs. This is testimony that the Creator has made this universe for us and that He cares about our needs. In the Bible we learn that He has provided for our greatest need through His Son, Jesus Christ. We owe everything to our Magnificent Creator!!! |
| 4/30/2022 | Could pizza be good for you? Research has shown that tomatoes, especially cooked, have powerful health benefits. That’s because tomatoes have a powerful antioxidant called lycopene, in addition to beta-carotene, other B vitamins, vitamin C and other important minerals. A four ounce tomato can provide you with one third the recommended daily amount of vitamin C. A European study of 1,300 men suggested that those who consumed the most lycopene in their food cut their heart attack rate in half, compared to those who had less lycopene in their diet. Another study that lasted five years followed the eating habits of 48,000 men. Those who ate 10 servings a week of cooked tomatoes, in whatever form, had one third the rate of prostate cancer of those who ate less than two servings a week. Cooking tomatoes, as you would for pizza and pasta sauce, makes five times more lycopene available to you than eating the same amount of raw tomatoes. That’s because cooking breaks down the cell walls of the tomato, making the lycopene more available for digestion. (Watermelons and pink grapefruit also have lycopene, but only as much or less as cooked tomatoes.) Our bodies are called temples of the Holy Spirit by Scripture. God has richly provided us with healthy foods to keep our temples healthy. Even pasta sauce and pizza offer us health benefits in addition to tasty dining. Our Magnificent Creator not only provided for our healthcare but blessed us with a tasty medicine as well!!! |
| 4/29/2022 | For many people, bats bring to mind words like “creepy,” “fangs,” “rabies,” and even “ugly.” However, over 450 years ago, Martin Luther marveled at the delicate beauty of the bat. He pronounced the creature an excellent witness to the skill and wisdom of the Creator. God must also like bats. Almost one-fourth of all mammals He created are bats! The flying fox bat has a wingspan of nearly six feet. Bumblebee bats, native to Thailand, are the smallest mammals known, weighing less than a penny. There are brilliantly patterned tropical bats called butterfly bats. And hundreds of species of tropical plants depend on bats as pollinators. Popular legend considers bats a serious part of the rabies problem. The truth is that raccoons, skunks, foxes, and even dogs and cats are more likely to have rabies. In fact, one study shows that in Pennsylvania you are more likely to find a rabid cow than a rabid bat. In reality, bats are delicate, helpful and intelligent creatures. A typical North American bat will eat about 600 mosquitoes an hour. Large colonies will consume between 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of insects per night! Bats can be trained, demonstrating their intelligence. And finally, an important warning. If you find sleeping bats, don’t disturb them. Even one such disturbance during sleep can be fatal since stored nutrition may be consumed by the disturbance before the next feeding cycle. So next time you see a bat, don’t recoil in fear. Rather, say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Magnificent Creator who made both of you!!! |
| 4/28/2022 | One of the criticisms of solar power is that it is so variable. Clearly, a solar plant is going to produce no energy at night and an inadequate supply when the sky is cloudy. On the other hand, a suitable size plant could over-produce when sunlight is intense. Plants have a similar problem. The rapidly changing incidence of sunlight on their leaves could, conceivably, cause problems within the plant. However, researchers have discovered that plants have mechanisms to cope with these variations, and one such mechanism could answer the old question: “Why are plants green?” Plants produce high energy carbohydrate molecules from water vapor and carbon dioxide by the well-known process of photosynthesis. This endothermic reaction requires the input of energy in the form of light, and the reaction is catalyzed by the green dye chlorophyll. What many of us have not considered is why chlorophyll is green. White light is a mixture of all three primary colors – red, green and blue – which have increasing frequency and, hence, increasing energy, in that order. The remarkable thing about plants, therefore, is that they are absorbing light energy only at either end of the visible spectrum while rejecting – and reflecting – the middle of the spectrum, which is green. Researchers have shown that this selective absorption of certain frequencies minimizes “noise” and, therefore, enables the plant to cope with rapidly changing conditions of sunshine. God, in His Magnificent Creation, has literally thought of everything. No wonder He said “and it was good”!!! |
| 4/27/2022 | Deep inside an ant colony, perhaps in a decaying log in northern Idaho or even the north woods of Minnesota, there are ants who think they are taking care of their only pupae. In addition to attending to their young, however, they are providing a dangerous ant predator with food and protection as it matures. The predator, called Microdon, matures into a fly like creature that lives only long enough to mate and lay eggs. How does Microdon get welcomed into the ant’s nest? It folds itself in half and ends up looking just like an ant larva. When researchers exposed some of the fly larvae in an ant nest, the ants quickly rescued the folded-over Microdon as if they were ant larvae. During its first of three larval stages, Microdon enters an ant cocoon and eats the contents. During its two later stages, Microdon moves unchallenged about the nest, eating more ant larvae. This fact at first puzzled researchers, since ants communicate and identify each other through specialized chemical signals. Further research revealed that Microdon are actually able to perfectly mimic this chemical communication! But perhaps the most fascinating features of Microdon are the odd structures found on the outside of its third stage. These vary from individual to individual and may look like toadstools or flowers. Scientists are unsure of their purpose. But they do marvel over the rich variety of the shapes, which seem unnecessary. While such variety may be unnecessary, they and the other features of Microdon testify to the rich creativity of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 4/26/2022 | When someone receives a donated organ they must take powerful drugs to prevent rejection. That’s because the body’s immune system identifies the implanted organ as “not me.” It then assumes that the invader is dangerous and must be destroyed. That brings us to a puzzling mystery that scientists have been trying to solve: Why doesn’t a mother’s body recognize her unborn baby as being foreign to her body? After all, carrying genetic information from the mother and father, the unborn baby is genetically unique. Some scientists theorize that the placenta is a physical barrier between the baby and the mother’s immune system. Others believe that the unborn baby somehow hides from the mother’s immune system. A third theory is that the mother’s immune system is somehow forced to tolerate the unborn child. New research from scientists at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia, supports this third alternative. Researchers have shown that the placenta produces an enzyme (IDO) that works to suppress immune cells. In effect, the unborn child puts together just the right enzyme to keep mom’s immune system from attacking it. Scientists say that this discovery may lead to new drugs to treat autoimmune diseases and organ rejection. This system or a similar system had to be fully operational in the first creature for successful pregnancies and births. It could not gradually evolve. This fact and the wisdom of this system provides more evidence of an all wise, all-powerful Magnificent Creator of every form of life and all that exists!!! |
| 4/25/2022 | Garlic. Even say the word and some people move away to give you some distance. Others gather around because, to them, garlic helps make the meal. Garlic has begun to attract the attention of medical researchers as well. At the Tagore Medical College in India, researcher Arun Bordia kept track of 432 heart attack survivors for three years. During that time, half of the survivors drank the juice from six to ten cloves of fresh garlic each day, while others took a garlic-scented drink with no garlic in it. Over the three-year period, the garlic group had 32% fewer heart attacks and 45% fewer deaths than the other group. Research in the United States with chickens, who metabolize cholesterol in much the same way as humans, suggests a reason for these results. Chickens that were fed aged garlic extract showed a 50% reduction in the kind of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Medical researchers are also looking at some interesting evidence that garlic may help prevent some forms of cancer, especially stomach cancer. When the Creator made the heavens and Earth, He knew that humans would disobey Him, destroying the creation with sin. He also knew that in doing so we would bring disease and death into the world. We can thank Him that He stocked the Earth with substances that could be used to treat some of the earthly effects of sin. However, we can thank our Magnificent Creator even more joyfully that He provided the full cure for sin for each of us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ!!! |
| 4/24/2022 | Our eyes do more work and tell more about us than many people realize. These amazing organs are so closely tied into the brain that they have been referred to as part of the brain. Your eyes were among your first organs to form. Within four weeks of fertilization, an unborn infant’s eyes begin to form. Interestingly enough, many newborns can move their eyes independently of each other, which can be a shock to unsuspecting parents. Usually the eyes are working together within a few months. However, those eye muscles will get more of a workout during our lifetimes than any other voluntary muscle. During any 24-hour period, our eyes will move about 100,000 times. That’s equivalent to walking 50 miles every day! Studies have shown that people with dark eyes generally have faster reaction times than people with light-colored eyes. Brown-eyed people generally are better at tennis while blue-eyed people generally do better at golf. Our eyes secrete different kinds of tears. Normal tears contain bacteria-fighting chemicals produced by cells in the lining of the eyelid. Emotional tears contain hormones released by the body in response to stress, including a natural painkiller. One more eye fact: The vitamin A in carrots is necessary for the proper working of the rods in your eye. The rods themselves are responsible for night vision. On a clear, dark night a healthy eye can see the light from a single candle 25 miles away!!! What a Magnificent Creator we have!!! |
| 4/23/2022 | There are more than 200 species of fireflies around the world. Almost everyone has seen these small insects flying about or sitting in the grass. On dark summer nights they can be seen flashing their lights like ships far out at sea. As they flash, they are communicating very specific messages to one another. The light created by fireflies is called cold light because it is produced without creating any heat. To make a flash, the firefly must make and mix a chemical called luciferin with oxygen and an enzyme called luciferase. This mixture is combined with a catalyst to create the flashes of light. The result is a method of producing light that is far more efficient than any source of light in your home. A relatively tiny amount of energy creates a generous amount of light. Fireflies do not make light so they can read a book. Their flashes are used for finding a mate. Fireflies are able to read the light signals of other fireflies. These signals may contain several messages. Some flashes can tell a firefly whether the sender is one of his species. Light flashes are used to identify whether the sender is a male or female. If it’s a female, the flashes can identify whether she has already mated. This is another example of the unlimited creativity and extravagance of our Magnificent Creator God. The same beauty of the firefly that creates wonder in the child should also fill us with wonder at the limitless imagination of God!!! |
| 4/22/2022 | “Dog bites man” is not an unusual headline. However, “Man bites dog” would usually get people’s attention. If that’s true, the headline “Leeches teach physicians” should capture everyone’s attention. Physicians used leeches in bloodletting treatments well into the 19th century. They were used to treat everything from headaches to heart disease. As the 20th century matured, the medical use of leeches became not only a memory but a symbol of how backward medicine used to be. Now, as the 21st century is underway, leeches are again a part of modern medicine. To obtain their food, leeches inject a powerful blood thinner called hirudin. This hirudin is what interests modern medical researchers in leeches. Doctors have for many years been using a blood thinner called heparin to dissolve blood clots, such as those associated with heart attacks. But researchers are finding that hirudin is ten times as effective as heparin in dissolving clots, and in addition it works directly to prevent clotting. The studies continue. However, medical researchers are convinced that the blood thinner which leeches taught them how to make offers a powerful medicine. Should the possibilities presented by this modern medicine be realized, many lives that are now lost due to blood clotting may soon be routinely saved. The Magnificent Creator of the heavens and Earth is so wise and generous that He can teach even modern science some new things through a seemingly simple creature like the leech!!! |
| 4/21/2022 | They are the only cells in the human body that repeatedly die and self-regenerate throughout life. They are probably the only cells in the body that inspired a Broadway play named after them. And science considers them so interesting that several branches of science are studying them. I am talking about hair cells. As scientists are learning more about hair, they are coming to greater appreciation of, as one researcher put it, hair’s bewildering biology. A Harvard molecular biologist admitted that one of the reasons we know so little about hair is that scientists have avoided studying this complex structure. The average scalp has about 100,000 hairs growing at any one time. Each hair follicle produces hair for about two to five years, followed by a rest period of four to six months. A miniature assembly line of cells divides within the follicle, pushing older hair cells upward through the skin. Pigmentation is added as each new cell is produced. When the follicle is at rest, it shrivels and many of its cells die. However, seed cells, promising new life to the follicle, hide within it waiting for the signal to spring back to life. As humans grow older, the resting time of the follicles increases and growing time decreases, especially in men. So if you find yourself balding, you’re not necessarily losing your hair. It’s just that your hair is spending more time resting than it used to. Our Magnificent Creator God tells us that He cares so much about each one of us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head!!! |
| 4/20/2022 | When Scripture talks about laughter, it most often speaks of laughter as a form of derision. God is described as laughing at the pride and plans of the wicked. However, that does not mean that God is against the right kind of humor. After all, He gave us the ability to laugh. In Ecclesiastes 3:4 we read that there is also a time to laugh. Jesus reminds the faithful, in the Beatitudes, that those who weep now will laugh with joy later. When you stop and think about it, anyone who can create the playful kitten cannot be against laughter. Medical researchers are finding out just what a wonderful gift laughter is. Laughter, it has been found, is excellent exercise for the lungs. It clears the respiratory system and is emotionally healthy. Laughter relaxes muscles. It is a proven reliever of emotional tension. Research also suggests that laughter has healing effects, possibly boosting the immune system. Laughter also has been found to have a natural pain-killing effect. In one experiment involving patients viewing funny films, the pain-killing effect of laughter lasted for up to two hours. Laughter has also been identified among chimpanzees and apes. Very possibly, other creatures have their own way of laughing. If we remember that Scripture also encourages us to “avoid foolish talk,” we can also give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for the gift of humor!!! |
| 4/19/2022 | We don’t often think about our sense of smell. While our noses are on the job all the time, we note an odor only when it is unusual. Most of the time, the scents around us contribute, unnoticed, to our overall impression of our surroundings. It’s hard to remain tense at the beach. Simply the mention of the water and waves, the sand and sun brings back to memory the last trip to the beach and starts relaxing a person. However therapeutic these elements of the beach are, scientists have found that the one beach fixture that is probably most responsible for relaxing us is the smell. The smelly chemical that utility companies put in natural gas so that we can smell leaks is methyl mercaptan. This chemical is also produced by rotting meat. The human nose is extremely sensitive to this smell. We can detect as little as one 400-billionth of a gram of it in a quart of air. Doctors have long known that their noses are helpful in diagnosing disease. A person is brought into the emergency room in a coma. It’s very likely that the doctor will smell the patient’s breath as he tries to discover the problem. A sweet smell could indicate diabetes. The smell of ammonia could indicate a kidney malfunction. Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic. Diphtheria can be identified by a sickeningly sweet odor, and people with the plague smell like apples. A patient who smells like freshly baked bread may have typhoid. While we seldom think about our sense of smell, it’s a wonderful gift from our Creator for which we owe Him thanks!!! |
| 4/18/2022 | Do your eyes ever play tricks on you? Our eyes regularly play tricks on us with the help of our brains. Repeated research has shown that the images we see are not exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes and brains work together to construct the images we call sight. It’s not that our eyes are out to hoodwink us. Most of the time our eyes are working to help us. Working together, our brain and eyes add logical details to the images we see. Each of us has a blind spot in our vision because there are no vision cells where the optic nerve is. Instead of showing us a spot of nothing at the blind point in our field of vision, our brain invents an image from surrounding details. Your brain pulls the same trick on you when you proofread your completed manuscript. While others can still find typos, you may not. Your brain knows what you are saying and so it automatically shows you a repaired version, making many of your typing errors invisible. Your pupils can reveal your thoughts. Studies show that when seeing unpleasant scenes the pupils retract. Pleasant or interesting scenes cause the pupils to open wider. Charles Darwin wrote, “To suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” We don’t often agree with Charles Darwin, but this time we do! Is there anything beyond the imagination of our Magnificent Creator? |
| 4/17/2022 | In recent years, our knowledge about Pluto has multiplied over and over again. Despite its status being downgraded to that of a mere Dwarf Planet rather than a planet proper, NASA determined to send out a space probe called New Horizons in January 2006. New Horizons finally reached Pluto in January 2015 and sent back invaluable data for about 18 months, with the result that we now probably know more about the surface of Pluto than that of parts of Earth’s ocean floor. Some surface evidence has caused scientists to think that maybe Pluto was a hot body when it came into existence. This heat could still be there, prompting speculation that there could be a liquid ocean beneath the icy frozen surface. Whenever water is discovered in the Solar System, thoughts turn to the possibility of life having evolved – especially as Pluto’s surface shows evidence of the existence of methane and ammonia molecules, which scientists always think could provide a synthetic route to organic compounds. Such interpretations ignore the fact that Earth was created separately from, and three days before, the creation of the other stars and planets. Our Magnificent Creator God in His infinite wisdom chose the Earth to be the sole focus of life!!! |
| 4/16/2022 | The closest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri 26 trillion miles away. That is 26 with 12 zeros after it. 26,000,000,000,000. When God in His magnificence creates something, distance is of no concern!!! |
| 4/15/2022 | There are many methods of communication, some of which we human beings don’t often think about. One of these is chemical communication. Take, for example, the female silkworm moth. When she is ready to mate, she releases a very small amount of a chemical. This chemical, called a pheromone, can attract a male silkworm moth from up to two miles away. Even though the female has released only 100-millionth of a gram, the male can sense the chemical. Many other insects use similar pheromones to attract mates. Pheromones are also used for chemical communication by ants to mark their trails. When an ant finds a good source of food, it returns to the nest, leaving an invisible scent trail. Its fellow ants also use this trail to find the food. As long as they still find food they will continue to reinforce the scent. Once the supply is exhausted and ants no longer follow the trail, it disappears within a few minutes. This chemical scent is so specific that another species of ant will not recognize the trail if he stumbles upon it. This helps protect the ants’ food source from being discovered by other ants. Chemical communication allows the communicator to communicate to another of its species, even over long distances. In one sense, pheromones are the animals’ version of radio. Our Magnificent Creator had no trouble providing for His creation to communicate in ways we still cannot fully understand!!! |
| 4/14/2022 | The loop-and-hook fastener called Velcro has come a long way since it first appeared. Velcro goes into space as a light, easy-to-use fastener. Here on Earth, it’s replacing everything from laces in children’s shoes to buttons and zippers on coats. However, humans were not the inventors of the hook-and-loop fastener. Plants were the first to use this principle. Scientists learned about the principle when they were checking out stories of how bean leaves were used to trap bedbugs during World War II. They discovered that the hooked hairs on the underside of bean leaves did indeed trap bedbugs by their feet. The bedbugs stayed stuck to the leaves until they starved to death. In nature, the hooked hairs trap leafhoppers, leaving them unable to munch on the leaves of bean plants. Further research has shown that some varieties of wheat trap the cereal leaf beetle, preventing damage to their leaves. Most amazing of all is the timing of this defense. Plants that use this method to protect themselves don’t start growing the hairs until a few days before the annual attack by their insect enemies! Humans might think their inventions are clever. However, because God is smarter than we are, it is very likely that somewhere, somehow, He has already created nearly every practical invention. This is yet another argument for creation by our Magnificent Master Creator!!! |
| 4/13/2022 | Many people know that, despite its appearance, coral is actually a tiny animal. Even a small coral growth may be made up of billions of tiny animals, each living inside its limestone skeleton. What many people don’t know is that coral cannot live without the help of algae – a plant. Thousands of one-celled algae live in the tiny stomach of each coral polyp. The polyp requires the waste products of the algae to complete its nutrition requirements and to get the calcium with which it builds reefs. In return, the polyp’s stomach provides an ideal protected living place for the algae. Incidentally, the wonderful colors in living coral come from the algae in each polyp’s stomach. Evolutionists have said that it must take millions of years for the tiny polyps to build large coral reefs – like the 2,000-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, incidentally, is considered the largest structure ever built by living organisms. However, it has now been shown that coral polyps can double their own weight in just over 10 days! As a result, the claim of millions of years for the age of the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by a factor of 40! Many of the long-age figures claimed by evolutionists have had to be drastically revised downward as we have learned more about the creation. The resulting figures fit the Bible’s account of history much more closely. Our mighty and magnificent creator worked with a plan that many try to find fault with but none have been successful!!! |
| 4/12/2022 | It’s not very pretty, nor is it graceful, but Colombia’s rock-climbing catfish has a unique ability among fish. Perhaps there are days when a salmon, trying to make it up a waterfall, wishes that it could simply climb the rocks. The rock-climbing catfish’s climbing equipment begins with a powerful sucker mouth. Once it attaches itself to a rock, it can stay stuck despite any torrent. The rock-climbing catfish also has a bony plate on its belly that helps it hold its place while it repositions its sucker a little further up the rocks. The plate has fins with tiny, backward-pointing teeth. These teeth dig into the rock and prevent slipping. The catfish’s third special feature is a set of powerful muscles to control the plate. Once the rock-climbing catfish has attached its sucker to the rock, it pulls up its stomach plate and anchors it. With its body anchored, it moves its sucker up the face of the rock and repeats the process. Following this method, the rock-climbing catfish can walk its way up a 20-foot rock wall against the torrent of a waterfall in about 30 minutes! Our magnificent God thought of everything in His master design for every creature!!! |
| 4/11/2022 | A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day [65–70 times a minute] with no time off for rest, to get most of us through seventy years or more. Our magnificent God’s master design for His master creation is infinite in detail and function!!! |
| 4/10/2022 | A gypsy moth caterpillar infestation can strip the leaves from large numbers of trees, threatening the trees’ lives. Since they don’t have a means of escape, it doesn’t seem as if the poor trees have much of a chance. But botanists were tipped off to the possibility that trees may not be all that defenseless when they began to investigate why only a few trees were badly damaged by insects in an infected grove while most stood unharmed. They discovered that when facing a threat like gypsy moth caterpillars, trees begin to defend themselves by sounding the alarm. A large variety of trees – including beeches, poplars, sugar maples and red oaks – communicate with each other. Scientists believe the trees communicate by releasing chemicals called pheromones into the air. What they now know is that before insects attacking one tree can get to the tree next door, the second tree has already begun defending itself. How do they defend themselves? When under attack or notified by other trees of attack, most trees begin to manufacture an array of poisons. Some of the poisons make leaves impossible to digest, while others kill the insects outright. Some make as many as eight poisons at once, and many can change the poisons that are made from year to year. Our Creator’s concern for living things extends even to plants. If He sees to this detailed level of care for trees, can there be anything in our lives that is too small for His loving concern??? |
| 4/9/2022 | During World War II Hitler and his Nazi Army killed one third of all of the then living Jews, six million of them. God’s magnificent plan of salvation is so perfect it would even have allowed Hitler to go to heaven if he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior!!! |
| 4/8/2022 | In Genesis 1:28, God tells man to subdue the Earth. That command implies that He has placed within creation tools and knowledge that humans can learn to use for their own benefit. After sin entered the world and sickness and death became a reality, God’s remarkable foreknowledge became evident. One of the first antibiotics ever discovered by humans has been in use for thousands of years. Modern researchers are just beginning to appreciate the wonder of this natural antibiotic that kills some 650 different strains of disease organisms. It is virtually nontoxic. And best of all, disease organisms don’t become resistant to it. What is this miracle antibiotic? Silver. Ancient Greeks and Romans used silver containers to keep liquids fresh. American settlers would often place a silver dollar in milk to delay its souring. Most of the world’s airlines use silver filters on aircraft to prevent dysentery. After testing 23 different methods for purifying water, NASA selected silver water filters for use on board the space shuttle. Japanese researchers have found that silver is even able to detoxify some poisons. God’s knowledge is far above ours. He has hidden in the creation around us knowledge that can help us in this earthly life. He invites us to learn from Him. He has “hidden” greater knowledge – knowledge that can help us here and in eternity – in the Bible. How could anyone be satisfied with what little we know from His great mind!!! |
| 4/7/2022 | Did you ever wonder where frogs go in the winter? Yes, frogs hibernate, but there is much more to it than that. Frogs are cold-blooded, meaning that they don’t create their own body heat. The heat they need to maintain life must come from the sun or the heat in the water and air around them. As the weather cools off, a frog’s blood begins to thicken, and life slows down. Frogs begin looking for places to hibernate. The frog must carefully select his winter resting spot. If his body temperature falls more than two degrees below the freezing point of water, ice crystals will begin to form in his blood, and he will die. Some frogs bury themselves deeply enough in the mud to avoid freezing temperatures. Others may crawl inside decaying logs or under leaves, both of which provide heat from decay to avoid freezing temperatures. Scientists have found that frogs have still another trick to help them survive. When the weather is unseasonably cool during the spring or summer, meaning a harder life and more deaths among the frog population, the next generation of frogs will automatically have more females. Additional females means that more eggs can be laid in the spring. As a result, the frog population will more quickly return to normal. Everywhere we look in the creation we find evidence, not only of the Creator’s wisdom, but of His loving care for every living thing. Do you know His loving care in your life? You can be absolutely certain of that care through the forgiveness of sins in our Magnificent Creator and Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!!! |
| 4/6/2022 | In showing how the Creator is intimately involved with His creation, Jesus Christ said that the very hairs of our heads are numbered by Him. This means that no detail is too small to escape His attention; no change misses His careful and loving eye. The hair that you see is nothing more than dead protein that is produced by the cells of the hair follicle anchored inside the layers of the skin. The total number of hair follicles on the adult body is about 5 million; only about 100,000 of them are on the scalp. Each hair grows out of one follicle for about three to five years. Then the hair is shed and the follicle rests for about three months before starting to grow hair again. So, you see, once you know how many hairs are on your head, it’s still no easy job to keep track of their changing number. The average scalp hair grows about one inch every two or three months. This means that each day, your head is growing the equivalent of one hair, 100 feet long – that’s nearly seven miles per year! Yes, it’s true – our Magnificent Creator cares so much about you that He knows from moment to moment how many hairs are on your head. He has not created our world and then left us to drift through space and life all alone. He has even expressed His love and purpose for you in the words of the Bible. Take a look today at what Scripture says about His Son, who loved you so much He even gave His life for you!!! |
| 4/5/2022 | The surface of the Earth 50 to 150 feet below the great living canopy of the rainforest is a dark, humid, still world dominated by great columns of tree trunks. Within those trunks and some of the giant hollow branches extending from them lie the secret of the life of the canopy itself. A rainforest typically receives 12 or more feet of rain per year. That much rain washes out of the soil most of the nitrates needed by the trees for growth. What the trees need is a rich source of nitrates that is constantly being replenished. And that’s where the bats come in. Typically, these huge trees are hollow inside. Many different kinds of creatures, including fruit bats, enter the hollow trees through various openings. Fruit bats find ideal daytime sleeping rooms inside the great hollow branches that extend like caverns from the hollow tree trunk. The accumulating layer of bat guano inside the tree itself is one of the richest sources of nitrates known. So the bats provide the tree with the nitrates it needs in exchange for a protected home during the day! In a very real sense, the fruit bats are the collection and transport system for the raw materials that make possible the tropical rain forest canopy with its millions of residents. The Creator has devised an ingenious way to provide for the needs of many creatures. Truly, the Lord – our Magnificent Creator – does indeed provide all living things with their food in precisely the way they need it and when they need it!!! |
| 4/4/2022 | Many plants reproduce simply by cloning. The most obvious example of cloning that comes to mind is the dandelion. Unless you get all of the main dandelion root out of the ground, each piece of the root can sprout another dandelion, identical to the parent. The walking fern reproduces by cloning too. It moves across the countryside, albeit slowly, by producing new plants. A new plant is generated wherever the tips of its leaves touch the ground. Each new plant is identical to the parent. The bamboo reproduces through underground stems. The different species of bamboo live anywhere from 20 to 120 years. During their life spans, they produce only by cloning. Then they flower – once. When it’s time for a particular species to flower, every member of that species, no matter where in the world it grows, flowers gloriously. Each flower can have as many as 100 pollen-producing stamens. Once the seeds are ripe and scattered, every member of that species in the world dies. At this point, the entire species exists only in the scattered seeds. This is brilliant testimony to a recent creation of all bamboos at the same time. If evolution produced them and the forces of change worked on them for millions of years, one would think that all members of the same species would no longer be in perfect synchronization. Bamboo makes a strong testimony for the recent creation reported in Genesis! |
| 4/3/2022 | Many plants, especially orchids, offer different ploys to fool insects into pollinating them. Each of these ploys shows planning, design and the ability to create the design that will work. That there are so many examples makes it impossible for any rational person to believe that mindless, impersonal forces could have made these plants. Four different groups of orchids produce flowers that look so much like the female of the insect that pollinates them that pollinators will try to mate with them. The Brassia orchid found in southern Florida produces a flower that mimics the prey of its pollinator, the spider wasp. The flower is so designed that as the wasp stings its supposed prey – really the flower – pollen is deposited on his head. The pollen is then carried to a nearby female flower and deposited in just the right place during another attack. Another orchid imitates an aggressive swarm of bees as it blows in the wind. The strongly territorial bees that live in the area swarm and attack the flowers. In the process, they transfer the pollen from male to female flowers. The female flowers of at least 50 species of Mexican orchids offer fake pollen to lure pollen-eating insects that have been feeding on male flowers. Many of these insect-orchid relationships are so tightly interlocked that neither could survive without the other. This speaks of a planned creation. It also bears witness that all forms of life came into being in a relatively short time, not over millions of years as evolutionists would have it. Only our Magnificent Creator could have done this!!! |
| 4/2/2022 | Much of the world’s surface is covered by rainforest. If you are unfamiliar with the rainforest, you may be tempted to compare it to forests you have seen. But really there is no comparison at all. In a rainforest, the Earth’s living surface is covered by a second living habitat some 50 to 150 feet in the air. Here, thousands of species of plants and animals live and breed for generations without ever touching the ground. The canopy of the rain forest is supported by huge trees that usually have no branches for the first 50 or more feet. They grow so close together and their tops are so dense that sunlight seldom reaches the jungle floor. This canopy can be up to 100 feet thick. While you might expect to find monkeys living in the canopy, you may not expect to find mice, frogs and even earthworms there as well. Here, most of these creatures are born, they live and die without ever touching the ground. The rainforest canopy is truly a second environment for life high above the surface of the Earth! Unusual environments like the rainforest canopy show us that the creativity of God is unlimited. He can create living things to carry on successful lives in any environment. He can create varied communities that interact and depend upon each other within each unique environment. His magnificent creation is truly a wonder!!! |
| 4/1/2022 | The largest known beetle in the world is the aptly named goliath beetle. This African beetle can become almost as large as a mouse. Dinosaurs were not the largest animals ever to live. The great blue whale holds that honor. The smallest mammal in the world is smaller than many insects. A newly discovered species of bat in Thailand weighs only six one-hundredths of an ounce. Such extremes might lead some to wonder whether those giant insects we see in the movies would ever develop. Could a spider grow to be as large as a house? You will be happy to know that no spider or any other insect could grow as large as a house. We can be sure of this because of the way insects breathe. Insects breathe through small tubes along their bodies. These tubes provide oxygen directly to their internal tissues. If an insect were to grow too large, these tubes could not get enough oxygen to the tissues. This is because the larger the creature, the more internal living tissue that requires oxygen. You and I have lungs that provide a network of surfaces equal to the size of a tennis court. An insect our size would need a body that has the surface area of a tennis court, too, which is an impossibility. Even though different creatures have different organs to supply their needs, each creature has just the right organs for its needs. This is a sign of our Magnificent Creator’s wisdom!!! |
| 3/31/2022 | A frequent objection to the truth of Genesis 1 is as follows: If the Sun was not created until Day Four, what was the source of light on Day One? As is so often the case, the answer to the question is not the first issue to be addressed. The first issue is always to see if there is a false presupposition behind the question. And there is! The assumption is that the light on Day One required a source. Even today, light can exist without a source. Light is so fast, that we are used to thinking that a light turns on immediately when a switch is thrown and is extinguished instantly when the switch is opened. This is not the case. Light actually has to travel, but does so very, very fast. The speed of light is often measured by firing a laser at the Moon to reflect this intense light off one of the mirrors placed for that purpose by Apollo astronauts. The light takes about 1.5 seconds to return to Earth but does not need to be left switched on all that time. A sharp pulse a fraction of a second will suffice. The laser is then switched off, but the light continues traveling without a source. On Day One, God set the light waves moving. He did not require help in doing so, and there is no problem understanding that He chose to place a source for that light on Day Four. As we think about the created light of Day One, we thank our Magnificent Creator that His word reminds us that He is light, and in Him is no darkness!!! |
| 3/30/2022 | For a moment think of the uniqueness of the human body. You, friend, are not a blob of protoplasm but a living organism of some 50 trillion cells. Your brain weighs about a kilo—roughly 2 ½ to 3 pounds. It consists of two hemispheres of gray matter connected by an interface called a corpus collosum. Daily, 10,000 thoughts flit in and out of your brain. A hundred billion neurons process information. Its complexity is something that we are just beginning to understand. Your heart pumps 18,000 gallons of blood daily through 75,000 miles of vessels and arteries. Try building something like that. Then there is the iris of your eye that automatically opens and closes depending on the intensity of light and lubricates itself with fluid called tears. Your hand, though, is perhaps the most amazing part of your body. Dr. Paul Brand, the great hand surgeon of the past century, believed it proved your uniqueness as a human being as does nothing else. Our magnificent God and creator simply spoke this magnificent creation into existence!!! |
| 3/29/2022 | There are at least four known types of orchids that effectively pretend to be female insects. They are so good at this ruse that they attract the attentions of male pollinators. That there are four different varieties that do this makes it clear that this trickery isn’t due to chance. The Creator does not want us to make the mistake of thinking that He doesn’t exist. The Ophrys group of orchids are found around the Mediterranean. Ophrys orchids produce flowers that look and smell so much like the insect that pollinates it, the male insect will mate with the flower. In the process, he picks up the pollen. The pollen is then carried to another flower, thus ensuring the next generation. The flowers even mimic the sheen of the female’s wings, the furry fringe on her abdomen, and her antennae. The Cryptostylus orchid, found in New Guinea and Australia, mimics the female of the wasp that pollinates it. The Cryptostylus does this so perfectly that it even moves as a mating female. The same is true of an orchid found in the Andes that is pollinated by a particular species of fly through the same ruse. God has much more in mind than just letting us know that He is. He wants us to see that He is intimately involved with His creatures. Through the perfect life of Jesus Christ, and His suffering, death and resurrection, He has removed the final barriers between us and Himself. With the barrier of sin removed by forgiveness, He may be even more intimately involved with each of us on a personal basis!!! |
| 3/28/2022 | The cockeyed squid lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone” where sunlight barely filters through the deep waters. The squid’s nickname is a reference to its two extremely different eyes: the left eye develops over time to become considerably larger than the right—almost twice as big. Scientists studying the mollusk have deduced that the squid uses its right eye, the smaller one, to look down into the darker depths. The larger, left eye, gazes upward, toward the sunlight. Our magnificent God thought of every need for every creature He ever made!!! |
| 3/27/2022 | The Andean condor is the world’s largest soaring bird. With a wingspan of more than ten feet, condors can soar for up to five hours, covering one hundred miles, without flapping their wings once! In one study, a group of condors spent just one percent of their time aloft flapping their wings. Our magnificent God saw to every need of every creature He ever made!!! |
| 3/26/2022 | Two groups of tropical vines rely for reproduction on the world’s only known species of pollen-eating butterfly. Neither vine has very showy flowers, nor do their flowers have any scent. However, they don’t need to attract pollinators because the Heliconius butterfly depends on the pollen produced by the vines for its food. So the butterflies don’t go far from their food source. Since the butterfly depends on the pollen, the vines produce many more male flowers than female. This keeps its army of pollinators well fed. Being messy eaters, the butterflies end up with pollen all over them. But what would attract the butterfly to the female flower, which can be up to 20 feet away? Two tricks are used. First, a female flower usually grows close to where a male flower has just withered. Second, the female flower, while producing no pollen, looks just like the male flower to invite the butterfly’s attention. Did you see the intelligence in this arrangement? If only chance were involved, why would the only known species of pollen-eating butterfly be found with the only known vines that rely on their services? This is a very big planet! If there is no design in this arrangement, why should these vines offer female flowers that look like the males so that they will be pollinated? It is so clear that these butterflies were custom-made for these vines, and the vines were made for the butterflies. This is a witness to a personal Creator Who is personally involved in life on Earth!!! |
| 3/25/2022 | The priests who served at the Temple began their “priesthood” at the age of thirty, having studied for twenty-eight years the priestly duties and responsibilities. The number of Levites serving the Temple in one capacity or another was 38,000, and of these, 24,000 of them were to carry out the work of the house of the Lord. It’s interesting to note that 4,000 of the 38,000 were “to praise the Lord” with instruments which King David had made to be used for “praising the Lord”. It was the “harp” that King David had made and used to “praise the Lord”. He also wrote many of the Psalms by using his harp. Our Magnificent Creator designed the way He wished to be worshipped leaving out no detail!!! |
| 3/24/2022 | Bees depend on a good memory of their surroundings to make the thousands of trips necessary to keep their hive in operation. Each day a single bee must make trips to hundreds of flowers, some as far as a mile from the hive. Scientists have long wondered how the tiny bee can remember what may be dozens of square miles of territory. When a bee finds a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and does a dance for the other bees. This dance tells them where a new find is located. Researchers have studied this in detail and can now interpret these dances. Researchers from Princeton University tricked a bee into dancing out a location that turned out to be in the middle of a nearby lake. After receiving the message, the other members of the hive simply ignored their fellow worker. She kept dancing, but no one would believe her. Only later, when the dance clearly said that the flowers were on the opposite side of the lake, did the other bees pay attention and check out the flowers. Researchers are now wondering whether bees keep a mental map of their surroundings. How else could they tell when someone gives them a false location? Evolutionary researchers are trying to figure out how such an “evolutionarily simple” creature as the bee could be so intelligent. However, the Bible makes clear that intelligence is not related to evolution. It is the gift of an all-wise and magnificent Creator!!! |
| 3/23/2022 | The human body, according to medical science, contains 37 trillion cells that reproduce themselves every seven years. Each one of the 37 trillion cells performs 10,000 different chemical functions, according to the late Dr. Ralph Byron of the City of Hope Cancer Clinic, yet all of them just work together to produce a healthy body. When you get tired, you cannot say, “All right, cell number 843,291, get to work. You are not pulling your share of the load.” All of these cells are linked together by nerve cells tied into a brain containing 100 billion cells (give or take a few). I hesitate to say that these 100 billion nerve cells are tied into a computer‑like device called the human brain since the human brain is far superior to any computer ever created. The eminent neuroscientist Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University in Israel says, “Our ability to understand all the details of even one brain is practically zero.” Only God in all of His brilliance and magnificence could have thought up such a complex piece of creation!!! |
| 3/22/2022 | Modern researchers are learning that bacteria are not a simple form of life. Rather, a bacterium is a tremendously complex creature that thinks. Scientists have discovered that bacteria actually have molecule-sized sensors. Some of these sensors act as eyes, while others act as ears. A dozen other proteins have been discovered that receive the information gathered by the bacteria’s “eyes” and “ears.” The collected information is then processed the same way your brain gathers and makes sense of information. Bacteria have specialized senses and a brain. In fact, bacteria are better at sensing some things than you and I are. A bacterium can, for example, sense the difference between two parts and one part in 10,000. This is the same as if you could tell the difference between one jar with 9,999 pennies and another jar with 10,000 pennies! The idea that bacteria are just “simple” forms of life comes from evolution. Growing research is showing that even one-celled creatures are not simple at all. Think of it. Every single-celled bacterium must accomplish, within that one cell, all the tasks we accomplish using the trillions of cells in our bodies. Eating, digestion, metabolism, waste removal, reproduction – and even thinking – all take place within a single cell! There is no such thing as a simple form of life. Science certainly argues against the idea that life began by accident. What science is learning urges us to think about the wise and thoughtful Magnificent Creator Who made us!!! |
| 3/21/2022 | How does your nose work? Medical researchers admit that they don’t know. Your nose performs an extremely unlikely job. It senses invisible molecules in the air and turns each molecule into a unique sensation that is sent to the brain. If the fact that molecules floating in the air could be detected was a modern discovery, it would be hailed as the scientific discovery of the century! Medical researchers do know that the roof of your nose cavity contains about 10 million cells that are wired directly into the brain. The nervous system that connects your olfactory cells to your brain is so large and complex that its surface area is several times greater than the surface area of your body. Researchers also know that your sense of smell is important to your sense of taste. For example, that’s why – when you have a head cold – chocolate tastes like a flavorless waxy paste. In this case, what you taste in your mouth has more to do with what is happening in your nose than on your tongue. Many creatures, including birds, can sense odors. Farmers who had difficulty with birds eating as much as 20 percent of the food set out in feed lots discovered that birds hate the smell of grapes. When they laced the feed with grape scent, the birds left it alone, but the cattle didn’t seem to mind. Every detail in the creation of everything that has ever existed was planned and created by our Magnificent God who knew that no detail was too small!!! |
| 3/20/2022 | What keeps the big-bodied bumblebee with those little, stubby wings in the air? Scientists are still trying to learn the secret of bumblebee flight. And while they are learning some astonishing things about the bumblebee, they still don’t know how he does it. Scientists have been testing bumblebees by monitoring their energy use, placing them in wind tunnels, and measuring their oxygen use. No, they haven’t been able to make little oxygen masks for the bees – bumblebees have 24 breathing holes. Scientists have learned that a flying bumblebee flaps its wings 160 times per second and consumes the equivalent of 180 candy bars per hour! A flying bee uses the same amount of oxygen for its body weight as a flying bird or a bat. However, unlike birds, the bumblebee uses no more oxygen when hovering than when flying. This is only one of the discoveries that contradict scientists’ theories. In fact, the director of the latest studies on bumblebee flight admits that they still have no idea how the bumblebee stays in the air. He warns other scientists to stop using the current theories on the subject because they are far too simple. Of course, our Creator God knows how to make a bumblebee fly, even if the best of modern science can’t figure it out. This should help us to see that when scientists tell us they have figured out how everything could have been made without a Creator, they don’t know what they’re talking about. In His great magnificence God did it and that’s all there is to it!!! |
| 3/19/2022 | Perhaps no type of animal has been used more in biological research than the fruit fly. Certain biological processes such as reproduction or genetic replication are similar in most eukaryote organisms, so observing these in fruit flies might, unlikely as it may seem, have implications for how the processes work in humans. The great volume of academic research which uses the fruit fly as the subject can be seen by the fact that, to date, eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to work involving drosophila. There are several reasons why fruit flies make useful research subjects. From the moment a fruit fly egg has been laid to the moment the adult dies is, on average, about 50 days. The adult flies can mate and lay eggs after just 10 days. This means that three generations can have been studied in a month. A year would yield 36 generations. The effects of inherited genetic problems or defects can, therefore, be analyzed within months, as can the probabilities of genetic problems being inherited by future generations. God has surely designed all that there is for our benefit to help us study and improve our lives in this world. God expects us to use His blessings to help ourselves and to not expect Him to do everything for us. We may need a hole in the ground but God might bless us with a shovel and wisdom to know how to dig!!! |
| 3/18/2022 | Even though many frogs live much of their lives out of the water, they need water to reproduce. This can be a problem since some frogs live in trees and some even live in the desert! For a tree frog, the trip from the treetops to a nearby pool is a long and dangerous journey. However, the Creator cares about all of His creatures. The leaves of the bromeliad that grows in the branches of many trees in the tropical forest form a private pool far above the ground. As a result, mama frog can raise her young without ever leaving the treetops! The desert would seem to offer an even greater challenge for a frog. However, since it pleased the Creator to place frogs in the desert – maybe to challenge the evolutionists – He has also provided for their needs. It may rain only once every two years in the deserts of central Australia. When it does rain, the water-holding frogs emerge from their underground hideaways to lay their eggs in the puddles. Before the puddles disappear, not only do the eggs hatch, but the young grow and develop into frogs that are able to store water until the next rain. As the desert again takes over, the frogs dig themselves back into the ground and go into suspended animation until the next rains come. A year or two later, the new generation will emerge after the next rain to raise their young. Neither chance nor the smartest frog in the world could design or create these abilities. Only a wise Creator could. And if the Creator has provided this much care for frogs, just think of how much more He cares about you and me in our everyday lives! What a Magnificent Creator He is!!! |
| 3/17/2022 | “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Genesis 2:19 It surely wasn’t possible, we are often told, for Adam to have given names to all the millions of species of animals that exist on earth in the space of one day. Obviously, they tell us, this means that the Bible is wrong. In fact, the activity was nowhere near as arduous as this accusation suggests. The number of animals would be far less than the estimated 2 million species. Adam did not have to go looking for these animals. God brought them to him. God brought three classes of animals to Adam – livestock, birds of the heavens, and beasts of the field. All of these are vertebrates, whereas 98% of all species are invertebrates. Of the remaining 2% – or 40,000 species – many have developed from others (note: developed, not evolved) by the process of speciation. It is likely that the creatures were all descended from just a couple of thousand baramins, or created kinds. It would not be that difficult for Adam to assign a name to each of the animals that paraded before him, especially as he was created perfect, and unlikely to get tired. Suppose he took five seconds to name an animal. He could have named 2,000 animals in 2¾ hours. You might think such a task would be boring, but it was not onerous and would easily fit with all the other activities occurring on that sixth day of God’s creation, including God making the land animals and making Eve from Adam. |
| 3/16/2022 | It has long been assumed that the Siberian woolly rhinoceros died out because of hunting by people. Evolutionists have, in the past, assumed that the extinction of the woolly rhino coincided with the migration of humans to Siberia. Now a new theory has emerged, which was headlined on the Science Daily website as “Ancient genomes suggest woolly rhinos went extinct due to climate change”. Analyses of the genetic make-up of woolly rhinos have been compared with alleged evolutionary dates. As creationists, we do not accept such dates because the Bible makes it clear that the world was created about 6,000 years ago, while the Flood occurred about 4,400 years ago. However, we do agree with the article that woolly rhinos had a common ancestor with the extant five species of rhinoceros. This is not evolution; as we have frequently explained, God made animals according to their kind [baramin] so that, after the Flood, they could cope with changing environmental conditions, adapting by a process called speciation. Scientists now suggest that the end of the Ice Age could have created conditions with which the highly cold-adapted woolly rhino would not have been able to cope. The world would have gone through the Ice Age in the centuries immediately following the Flood as water vapor from warm oceans condensed in a cold atmosphere. As is always the case, good modern scientific research on issues, like the extinction of the woolly rhino, is consistent with the biblical account of the world from our Magnificent Creator!!! |
| 3/15/2022 | A study by the University of Lincoln in England suggested that “global sea level rise of at least 10 centimetres by the end of the 21st century if global warming trends continue”. Their conclusions, they report, are based on 30 years of scientific data in Greenland, looking at the melting of the glaciers on that large ice-covered island. The Greenland ice sheet, say the researchers, could potentially raise the entire world’s sea level by seven meters (about 23 feet). One is reminded of a recent documentary by a well-known politician turned environmental campaigner, which started with film of rapidly running water plunging through holes in the ice of Greenland’s glaciers. The unspoken implication was that this was caused by global warming. In fact, there has been no global warming trend over the last 30 years. Global temperatures rose rapidly in the ‘90s, followed by cooling from 2000 to 2009, with temperatures only picking up again in the last few years. So the idea that the next 80 years of the 21st century will see steady temperature increases is not based on evidence. As is so often the case, we need to recall that God has promised there will be no catastrophic climate change again until the end of the world. Our Magnificent Creator has plans for every need we will ever have!!! |
| 3/14/2022 | The Willow Warbler is a fascinating little bird. It weighs less than half an ounce and measures about four inches from its beak to the tip of its tail. It likes open woodland with small trees and is particularly happy in areas managed by humans, such as coppices and young plantations. An attractive little bird, it is greenish-brown from above, with a yellowish underside. Willow Warblers are part of the Leaf Warbler, or Phylloscopus baramin (or created kind). There are 77 species in this baramin, but we are interested here in the species Phylloscopus trochilu, especially the subspecies Phylloscopus trochilus yakutensi. This remarkable little bird has the most incredible migratory behavior, traveling about 7,500 miles. Between April and August, the birds live and breed in eastern Siberia. But as the breeding season ends, the birds begin their long, exhausting flight to sub Saharan Africa, where they will spend the winter, from October through March. Then they begin the 7,500-mile journey back to Siberia. That’s 15,000 miles per year! The reason why these warblers migrate seems clear. They do not like the extremes of temperatures in either of their homes. But a more interesting question is: How do they know where to migrate? Scientists have speculated that migratory birds are able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. But those scientists who believe in evolution have to explain how the birds used trial and error to find their routes. A more logical explanation is that our magnificent God designed them to achieve this remarkable feat!!! |
| 3/13/2022 | There are between 10,000 and 15,000 species of orchids. While you surely are not familiar with all of them, it sounds strange to talk about orchid behavior. This huge variety of orchids offers a multitude of different flower shapes, colors and sizes. Each unique shape, color and size is perfectly suited to the bees, butterflies, bats, moths, flies and birds that are involved in that orchid’s pollination. Those orchids that use birds as pollinators have no scent. Instead, they offer the brightest of colors, appealing to the birds’ strongest sense. Evolutionists call this “co-evolution.” However, giving it a name doesn’t explain it. How did these orchids know that the bird’s strongest sense is sight? And how were these orchids able to perform genetic recombination on themselves so that they could develop their bright colors? No, giving something a scientific-sounding name doesn’t make naturalistic claims any more scientific. Or consider the bee orchid. It offers a flower that looks like a female bee. The purpose here is to attract male bees to a position that will load them with pollen. How can it be scientific to suggest that a plant purposely restructured itself to fool bees into pollinating it? God has purposely made it impossible to explain the creation without Him. He did this not simply so that we would see that He is real. His purpose is much greater. God seeks a personal relationship with you and has made that possible through the saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. It is to Christ that He would ultimately draw our attention. |
| 3/12/2022 | Honeydew is one of the favorite foods of ants. There are a number of insects, including thorn bugs and aphids, who consume so much honeydew that they cannot digest it all. These insects are designed so that ants can milk them for the excess honeydew, just the way a farmer obtains milk from a cow. Many species of ants will milk the honeydew-collecting insect by stroking its abdomen with its antennae. The tree hopper actually slows its secretion of excess honeydew to the milking ant so that the ant may drink his honeydew “fresh from the cow” so to speak. Some ants construct clay pens and shelters in which they enclose certain species of aphids, just as a farmer keeps his herd. Like the farmer, the ants move the aphids to better honeydew feeding sites when necessary. They also care for the aphid eggs during the winter. Herding ants are even better able to protect a young tree hopper than its parents. It is not unusual for a tree hopper parent to turn her young over to herding ants because they can do more for the young insect than she can. Such complex relationships between creatures points to a God who is both a Magnificent Creator and Teacher—even to insects!!! |
| 3/11/2022 | You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
| 3/10/2022 | How many ants are there in the world? No one has actually counted them all or asked them to fill out little ant census forms. However, scientists have estimated that there are about 10 million billion ants in the world, waiting for you to have a picnic. That’s more ants than there are mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians combined. God made so many ants because ants are important housekeepers for the earth. Ants, not earthworms, turn most of the world’s soil, drain it, and enrich it. Ants dispose of 90% of the corpses of small dead animals. As the world’s gardeners, ants spread and plant more seeds than any other creature. Like bees, ants have a sophisticated society, which includes workers, nurses, soldiers, hunters, farmers, and even builders. Each of these different classes have specialized organs for their work. The soldier ants of one species are walking bombs. They are loaded with poison and literally explode when under attack, spraying poison on their enemies. Army ants in Central and South America march across the countryside in a line that can be nearly 50 feet long. The solid column sweeps along, flushing out even small animals, as it looks for food. The huge variety of living things around us represents more than simply variety. That variety carefully includes creatures to do every job that needs to be done to maintain life on earth. This, in itself, is a witness to both the creativity and wisdom of the Creator!!! |
| 3/9/2022 | If your measuring stick is inaccurate, you could end up with too much wallpaper or too little. If your map tells you that your destination is 200 miles away when it’s really only 50 miles away, you might drive right past it. If your map of the universe is inaccurate and stars are a lot closer than you expect, you will arrive at the wrong age for the universe. Most science textbooks solemnly teach that the universe is 10 to 20 billion years old. A distant galaxy in the Virgo cluster is one of the primary measuring sticks used by astronomers to figure out the distance of other objects in space. Ultimately these distances are used to compute the age of the universe. Recently, though, astronomers were finally able to see individual stars in this distant cluster. Using a new, high-resolution camera, astronomers saw stars that are very much like stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. Since they know how bright these stars are, they were able to check their computations on how far away the measuring-stick galaxy is. Instead of the expected 100 million light-years, their new figures told them that the galaxy was only 50 million light-years away. This means that the universe might only be half as old as they thought. The lesson for us in this is that the millions and billions of years many scientists talk about are mere speculation. Many measuring sticks for the age of the universe are available, and many of them support an age in the biblical range of only thousands of years. The only source for the age of this universe is our Magnificent Creator himself!!! |
| 3/8/2022 | Some people have the green thumb in their family. Others may complain that they fail with plants because plants don’t tell them when they need care. Of course, most people can do well with family pets, who are enthusiastic about letting their needs be known. Now scientists have learned that plants do indeed cry out when they need attention. We just haven’t heard them because the sounds made by a thirsty plant are about five times higher-pitched than we can hear. But scientists with tiny, specialized microphones have heard corn plants calling for water. During their study, researchers learned that plants make a great deal of noise. Corn leaves and stalks make noises as they slide against each other during growth. We have all heard the sound of plant leaves rattling in the wind. Corn stalks also make noise as they bend in the wind. However, another sound was heard when the corn didn’t have enough water. It was a high-pitched popping noise. Plants have water tubes in them that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the leaves. Water flows up these tubes under tension. When there is not enough water, the tension becomes too great and the tubes fracture. The popping is the sound of those tubes fracturing. The result of fractured tubes is a wilted plant. When water is restored, the tubes refill, the popping noises stop, and the plant again looks healthy. The purpose of this research was to learn when to water crops and how much water they need. Now that we have learned how plants communicate, crops can tell farmers when to water! Aren’t we blessed to have a Magnificent Creator that took care of so much minute detail!!! |
| 3/7/2022 | Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for God’s complete attention!!! |
| 3/6/2022 | How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements that we find in the plant and animal kingdoms that our Magnificent Creator has designed!!! |
| 3/5/2022 | Most of us are familiar with the body’s response to foreign tissue. Transplant patients must be carefully matched and then patients still must be given powerful drugs to prevent destruction of the transplanted tissue. Our bodies’ immune system identifies tissue that’s not its own and then tries to destroy that tissue. As we have learned more about the immune system, doctors began asking themselves why a pregnant mother’s body doesn’t reject the foreign tissue of the baby growing inside her. The answer to this mystery is not fully understood, but research has suggested some answers. From conception the unborn child is a genetically unique individual. Researchers think that the most important protection the unborn child has is the trophoblast. This tissue, known as the caul, seals the growing infant from its mother. However, the trophoblast itself develops from the same cells as the infant. So why doesn’t the mother’s immune system attack? It appears that under normal conditions the trophoblast is a special set of cells that the body cannot identify as foreign. In addition, the trophoblast makes cells that encourage the mother’s immune system to protect it. Scientists now believe that this amazing feature may actually be provided by the father’s genetic information. In effect, the baby, with the help of the father, immunizes the mother’s system so that it doesn’t reject the baby! So, even before birth, the mother nurtures and the father protects the child. What a magnificent Creator we have!!! |
| 3/4/2022 | In a clever scheme of self-protection, the more poisonous the male rattlebox moth is, the more prized he is by the female rattlebox moth. In the caterpillar stage the male moth favors the pods of certain legumes. These pods contain a powerful poison that seems to have no effect on the caterpillar. After the caterpillar has become a moth and it’s time for mating, the male releases a scent produced by the poison. Those who have more poison in their bodies release a stronger scent, while those with little poison release only a weak scent. Female rattlebox moths prefer males with a strong scent. During mating the male coats the eggs with some of the poison, making them unpalatable to predators, like ladybugs, who might eat the eggs. So the more poison a male has, the better protected the female’s eggs will be. Studies have shown that female rattlebox moths will ignore males that have collected no poison. Likewise, the male of the queen butterfly species collects another plant poison in his system. This poison is produced by plants for protection against insects. The butterfly doesn’t attack the plant; rather he drinks the poison from already injured plants. Here, too, the female queen butterfly favors those males with the most poison. It appears that human beings are not the only creatures who go to the drug store to get needed medicines. The Magnificent Creator has provided the animal world with their own drug store and the knowledge of how to use the chemicals He has provided!!! |
| 3/3/2022 | Fireflies may help light the way to new medical breakthroughs. The gentle glow of a firefly on a summer evening is produced by the chemical luciferase. The firefly has a gene with the code that makes this chemical. When that gene is added to the genetic information of other plants or animals, the cells begin to glow harmlessly. Researchers have been using the firefly gene to test their ability to add genetic information to a cell. When human heart arteries become clogged, a medicine called TPA is among the treatments doctors use. TPA is a natural clot-dissolving protein that helps prevent heart attacks. The problem is, without a continuous supply of TPA, the artery may reclog. It would help if the artery could make its own TPA 24 hours a day. Since TPA is a natural protein for which there is a genetic code, researchers wanted to know if genetic information could be added to artery cells. To find out, they injected dogs with the genetic code for luciferase. If genetic information could be added to the cells through this method, they would actually see the results in the glowing tissue. Tissue samples taken three days later did, in fact, have the distinctive glow of the firefly proving that the method works. They warn that several years of research lie ahead before artery cells may be able to dissolve their own clots. Those glowing fireflies that delight children and adults show God’s design in the creation in an unexpected way. The chemical that makes the glow is proving to be an important tool of medical science. What a magnificent creator we have to preplan our needs!!! |
| 3/2/2022 | The world is a frightening place without God. This fear can be seen today in fears that modern people often confuse with science. Several years ago stories of gloom and doom about a greenhouse heating of the earth were starting to fill the media. The people at Creation Moments looked at the scientific basis for these claims. They wanted to know if the greenhouse warming of the earth was a true threat or just another fear of a godless people. They then published the conclusion that the thin and conflicting evidence for greenhouse warming most likely came from the heat island effect of growing cities around some of the temperature measuring sites. Knowing the elegance with which God designed everything in creation, creationists suspected that God probably designed the earth with built-in thermostats that help keep it from warming up too much. When the Pacific Ocean warms more than normal, it sends increasing amounts of water vapor into the air. If heating continues, the water vapor will actually cause the heating to increase until vapor is forced higher into the atmosphere, creating icy cirrus clouds. These clouds reflect enough incoming sunlight to shut down the temperature increase and return things to normal. We are called to be good stewards of the earth. We can be good stewards in joyful service, freed from the fears that afflict those who don’t know God. What a magnificent creator we have in our God!!! |
| 3/1/2022 | Many textbooks tell young people today that birds are modified reptiles. Suppose, they say, that millions of years ago the scales on some reptiles began to fray along the edges. In time, they say, the frayed scales turned into feathers and birds were born. The elegance and beauty of the feather make this story hard to believe. Can sticking a feather on a lizard produce a peacock? The bird’s feather is only a small part of the complete flying system of the bird. Even with very careful planning and redesigning, a reptile doesn’t have what it takes. A bird needs massive breast muscles for flight. In some birds, 30% of the body weight of the bird is breast muscle. By comparison, in humans breast muscles are only about 1% of body weight. A bird also needs an extremely high metabolism and blood pressure to deliver the energy those muscles need for flight. Birds have a higher metabolism than any other creature; they also have the necessary high blood pressure. Finally, as is well known, birds need light skeletons. The man-o’-war has a wingspan of seven feet. But its entire skeleton weighs only a few ounces—less than its feathers! Even the most clever rebuilding of a reptile cannot produce a bird. In fact, birds have very little in common with reptiles. The entire being of the bird, from body to brain, has been specially designed for flight by a Creator who clearly knows everything there is to know about flight!!! |
| 2/28/2022 | While the Bible teaches us that sex is a wonderful gift of God, evolutionists believe that sexual reproduction should not have evolved. According to evolutionists, if sexual reproduction were to develop, evolution is supposed to get rid of it. To make matters worse, immobile plants use sexual reproduction. This creates a problem in transferring the male genes to the female for fertilization. Just to confound things even more, God uses insects and even mammals to transfer the pollen. Since evolutionists believe that plants were around for many millions of years before animals, evolutionists have yet another problem. The European family of the Arum lilies attracts beetles and flies. When one of the insects lands on a flower, he finds a slick, oil-coated surface and ends up sliding down into a chamber filled with small hairs. Imprisoned, he finds a sweet sap that makes good eating. While he is gorging himself on the sap and getting sticky in the process, the male part of the flower showers him with pollen. The next day, the sticky, pollen-coated insect finds that the doors to his prison are open. So he flies off to another flower to unwittingly deliver his load of pollen! It sounds like science fiction to say that a flower figured out how to do this. And it certainly doesn’t sound very scientific to say that nobody designed and made this complex arrangement. As we learn more about these arrangements in nature, it becomes even more clear that an all-wise Creator designed these beautiful, symbiotic relationships between different members of the living kingdom!!! |
| 8/23/2023 | The yellow-and-black striped archer fish shops among the insects that land on branches overhanging his pond in the peaceful waters of the East Indies. Sometimes he will wait under a branch until something that would make a good lunch lands on it. When the archer fish finds a tasty-looking insect, he shoots an accurately aimed stream of water at his prey, knocking the insect into the water. Before the insect has a chance to recover, the archer fish has eaten him and is looking for dessert. The archer fish has a deep groove in his mouth. When he places his tongue against this groove, he ends up with a blow tube that is about 1/16-inch in diameter. Compressing his gills forces pressurized water through the blow pipe. The rounded tip of the archer fish’s tongue acts as a valve so the fish can shoot a few small bursts or one long stream of water at his prey. The archer fish seldom misses if his prey is within four feet. This simple but elegant arrangement is testimony to a wise and skillful Creator. Neither mindless chance evolution nor any fish could be smart enough to design this system. Nor could any fish redesign his normal mouth tissues into this unique tool. Here we see that our Magnificent Creator God even cares about providing the needs of a fish. We know that He cares even more about our lives! In fact, He has said so! |
| 8/22/2023 | Language requires some very special designs that are rare in nature and found together only in humans. First, human language requires vocal cords, which none of the apes have. The only animals with vocal tracts are birds, but no one is suggesting that we evolved from birds. Language also seems to require an unusual structure to the brain. The frontal area of the left hemisphere of the brain is connected to an adjacent area of the cortex called the Wernicke area. These two areas are linked by a bundle of nerve fibers. The result is a distinct brain asymmetry that is unique to humans. Even the unborn human has this asymmetry that allows it to absorb language. Development in this area of the brain stops at puberty. That is why it becomes more difficult for adults to learn a new language. Language skills can be learned only by hearing language. So-called “feral” children, who have heard no language at all, cannot be taught language after puberty for the same reason. So where did Adam first hear language? Scripture tells us that it was our Magnificent Creator God Himself who regularly spoke with Adam. This means that language is not a collection of meaningless sounds to which we have assigned meanings. The meanings and sounds have come from God, just as our unique design that makes language possible comes from God. Therefore, language is not only for worldly purposes. We have also been given language to praise our God and Savior and to tell others who He is and what He has done! |
| 8/21/2023 | Which body structure is a powerful generator of emotions, gives you a sense of direction, and serves as a cannon all at the same time? It’s your nose, of course! It is common knowledge that without our noses the scent of a rose could not give us joy, nor would our food taste like very much. Less well known is the fact that our noses are directly hooked into the brain’s limbic system. Your limbic system plays a central role in generating and controlling emotions. This is why certain scents are able to raise strong emotional memories in us. The nose is also designed to filter out and catch particles that should not get into the lungs. When a particle is taken in through your nose, it is snagged by the tissue inside your nasal passages. Next, this highly special tissue decides the best method of getting rid of the foreign material. If a bacterium is identified, your nose begins to run, bathing the bacteria in powerful chemicals that dissolve most of them. If the particles are larger, like pollen, a sneeze is triggered that can eject particles at speeds of over 100 miles per hour! Perhaps the most remarkable ability associated with the nose is its ability to act as a compass. Human beings have a small amount of iron in the bony part of the nose between the eyes. Scientific experiments have shown that we have an ability, while not foolproof, that can sense direction that is influenced by magnetic fields! Our Magnificent Creator God made your multi-purpose nose not only to bring some pleasure to life but also to help protect your health. |
| 8/20/2023 | “And the LORD God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It’s behind your refrigerator and under your bed. It’s part of the air you breathe. While dust is common, it’s not commonplace at all. Much of the dust in our everyday lives is nothing more than tiny particles of skin, clothing, carpeting – just pieces of everyday life floating in the air. Studies of dust particles reveal that most dust is soil. However, a second common dust – even a thousand miles from the sea – is salt, driven into the wind by the waves. This salt helps form the clouds that bring us rain. The next most common forms of natural dust are volcanic eruptions and forest fires. Transatlantic winds pick up the dust of the Sahara and sweep it across the ocean where enough of it lands in Miami to sometimes give the rain a light pink color. Not only does your home have dust from all over the world, there’s probably also some from outer space. Ten thousand tons of disintegrating meteorites and comets rain down on the Earth every year. You can even identify some of this dust by running a magnet through the dust in a rain gutter. Most of the magnetic particles that stick to the magnet are probably from space. In addition, some dust is alive, made up of pollen, fungus spores and even dormant bacteria, hoping to land on a good place to grow. Dust reminds us that the world is smaller than we think and that it won’t last forever. Are you ready for the next world? All your preparations have been made by Jesus Christ. Find out in the Bible what our Magnificent Creator God has done for you today. |
| 8/19/2023 | Spider silk begins as a liquid protein made by silk glands on the spider’s abdomen. Spiders make many kinds of silk for different uses. As the liquid silk is forced through the spider’s spinnerets, it begins to dry. The spinnerets pull and stretch the silk, creating just the right kind of silk for the spider’s use. Though the result seems thin and weak to us, ounce for ounce, spider silk is stronger than steel. Web-building spiders make two types of silk for their traps. The basic structure of the web is made of strong, nonsticky silk. Then the spider adds a sticky, elastic silk to trap its prey. Some webs are irregular, others are flat and sheet-like, while still others are shaped like funnels. All of us have admired the beautiful orb web. However, spiders also have many other ways in which they use their silk. The ogre-faced spider makes a net that it throws around its intended victim. The European water spider builds its web underwater. It stores its air supply in the web. The lasso spider twirls a single strand of silk over its head. A tiny drop of sticky silk at the end of the lasso captures its prey when the lasso is thrown. Probably the most creative use of silk is by the young of some species. When they hatch, they produce long loops of silk that catch the wind and send them floating off to new places. The spider’s skill in producing and using silk had to come from Someone wiser and more clever than the spider. Clearly the spider has been well-equipped and instructed by our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
| 8/18/2023 | We have looked at many plants and animals that use different forms of camouflage to keep from being noticed. Some don’t wish to be noticed so that they can surprise their prey, while others don’t want to be noticed so they can avoid becoming prey. However, what happens when both predator and prey encounter each other in full camouflage? The predator in this drama, witnessed by a naturalist at the edge of a desert, is a yellow crab spider. The spider was waiting on a yellow flower that made him nearly invisible. The potential prey is an inchworm beneath the same flower. The inchworm was tearing off bits of the yellow flower petals and sticking them on its back. Properly camouflaged, the inchworm then worked his way toward the top of the flower where the spider waited. The spider felt the movement and ran around the edge to see whether lunch might be on the way. However, when the spider got around the edge of the flower, he saw nothing. He didn’t even notice the camouflaged inchworm on which he was standing! The spider then returned to the center of the flower, outsmarted by the inchworm who went on about his business. Our wisdom would have said that the inchworm should try to run when he noticed the spider. However, the wisdom given to him by our Magnificent Creator God allowed him to continue about his business on the flower. This offers us a good illustration of how following the Lord’s wisdom often requires us to reject our own. |
| 8/17/2023 | Squirrels often seem to run about without any purpose. However, a naturalist in the State of Maine recently discovered that the squirrel’s activities are well planned and efficient. It was a cold January day when the naturalist was watching a red squirrel who seemed to be nibbling on a sugar maple. Then the squirrel would run to a tree where some of the sap had leaked out and lap at it with his tongue. The naturalist knew that conventional wisdom said it was too early to tap trees for sugar. He also knew that the sap from the trees is 98 percent water and could not provide enough energy to keep the squirrel going in cold weather. Becoming more curious, he decided to study the squirrels’ activity in detail. He discovered that the red squirrels were systematically tapping the sugar maples with a peculiar bite into the tree. Each bite went through the outer and inner bark and into the xylem where the sap runs. The squirrels were then allowing the running sap to dry until the sugar content was more than 55 percent. Not only were squirrels tapping just the maples, they only tapped them when the weather was right for the sap to run. The mad running up and down the trees actually followed a careful daily schedule of tree visitations that could include over 70 trees! Could it be that humans learned from squirrels to tap sugar maples? Whatever the answer to that question, we know that it was our Magnificent Creator God Himself Who taught the squirrel the processing and use of this sugary winter treat! |
| 8/16/2023 | The founders of modern science, on the whole, believed in the Creator. The methods they developed were based upon the truth that the creation is voluntary. This means that God was not confined to what we have later defined as “scientific laws.” God could make anything He wanted in any way He wanted. Science cannot be done from the philosopher’s easy chair. Scientists must go out into the field and study how nature works. When science follows this path, it is open to astonishing discoveries. One recent unexpected discovery was the hot water vents deep below the ocean’s surface. Where the earth’s crust has split apart, hot water gushes out. This water reaches temperatures hot enough to, say, cause a piece of paper to burst into flame. Only the tremendous pressure more than a mile below the waves keeps the water in liquid form. It was in this environment that scientists made an even more amazing discovery. They found bacteria that could live in the almost 700 degree water. These amazing creatures find the normal, sea level boiling point of water to be so cold they can barely survive. Scientists are still trying to learn how these creatures live at temperatures that would destroy the normal biochemistry of life. Each new discovery tells us a little more about the work of our wonderful Magnificent Creator God. That’s what science was originally intended to do. Keep that in mind when you hear someone say that belief in the Magnificent Creator makes doing science impossible!!! |
| 8/15/2023 | Our senses link us to the world around us and enable us to interact with the world. While most people believe that our sense of sight is the highest of the senses and the most marvelous in design, our sense of hearing is no less marvelous. When a sound strikes your ear, your eardrum vibrates with the sound waves, fast or slow, soft or hard. These variations in vibration provide us with important information about the nature of the sound we are hearing. Some sounds produce a vibration in the eardrum as small as a billionth of a centimeter – only one-tenth the diameter of a hydrogen atom! There are three tiny bones in the middle ear called the hammer, anvil and stirrup. They pick up the vibrations from the eardrum, amplify them and send them on to the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with about 25,000 tiny hair cells that finally turn the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent on to the brain. Our hearing is designed to be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than to lower sounds. If we had just a little more sensitivity to lower-pitched sounds, we would continuously be distracted by the internal sounds of our body, including the blood rushing through our arteries. In fact, to help prevent this, there are no blood vessels at all in that part of the ear where vibrations are turned into electrical impulses. The body supports life in these tissues by constantly bathing them in dissolved nutrients. While we can hear many things, and decide not to hear other things, our Magnificent Creator God who so marvelously designed our ears invites us to hear His Word to us from the Bible. |
| 8/14/2023 | Many plants and animals disguise themselves as something they are not in the hope of protecting themselves. However, a true master of disguise must have many disguises. The tiger swallowtail offers no less than three disguises as it grows through its various stages toward adulthood. The newly hatched larva looks for all the world like a bird dropping. This appearance makes the larva of no interest to birds that might otherwise eat it. Three molts later the caterpillar has turned green to match the leaves on which it feeds. In case he is spotted by some birds looking for a nice fat caterpillar for lunch, the caterpillar also has two large spots on its head that look like the eyes of a snake. Birds who are interested in caterpillars usually try to stay as far from snakes as possible. Finally, in the pupal stage, the tiger swallowtail has again radically altered its appearance. The pupa now looks like nothing more than just another broken twig on a tree trunk. The immature tiger swallowtail’s bag of disguises reflects a great deal of knowledge about the behavior of those creatures that threaten it. Each of its three disguises uses a different method to fool those birds that would be interested in the larva. Each disguise has the same specific goal. This master of disguise is no accident of biology. Our Magnificent Creator God’s purpose in making Himself evident in the creation is ultimately aimed at bringing each of us into a relationship with Himself. That relationship is based on the forgiveness of our sin through His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 8/13/2023 | It was first discovered in 1855, but many scientists debated its existence for another 50 years. Once its existence was finally proven to everyone’s satisfaction, it was another 50 years before science had any tools to begin studying it. Finally, in the late 1980s, scientists began to learn a little about the secrets of one of the tiniest, yet most amazing structures in the body. At the back of the eye, between the deepest layer of the retina and the cells beneath it, lies a tiny moat made up of about 10 drops of a mysterious fluid. The entire moat is thinner than a sheet of cellophane. It seems that the clear fluid in the moat serves the surrounding light-sensing tissues of the eye in place of blood, bringing in nutrients and carrying away waste. It also transports light-sensitive chemicals needed by the light-detecting cells in the eye. In addition, it seems to glue the retina in place. More than that, the moat is rich in a growth factor. This fact makes scientists believe that the gel may also be important to repairing injuries to the retina, keeping the cells of the retina young and active, as well as helping in the growth of new cells. As one researcher said, the more they study this tiny structure, the more unexpected abilities they find – something like a bottomless suitcase. Charles Darwin, who didn’t even know about the moat, was right when he said that it was impossible to believe that natural selection could have produced the eye. As Christians we believe that only Our Magnificent Creator God could have produced the eye!!! |
| 8/12/2023 | “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” We’ve all heard this familiar saying. In the case of the sun’s fire, scientists expect to find not smoke but tiny particles called neutrinos. The problem is, most of those neutrinos are missing. It was once thought that the sun’s heat was produced as it’s powerful gravity caused it to collapse in on itself. But as the theory of evolution became popular, this theory fell out of favor. Those who promoted evolution knew that their theory was more believable if they said the sun was millions or billions of years old. However, if the sun’s heat came from gravity collapse, it could not possibly be that old. So when scientists learned about nuclear energy, they proposed the theory that the sun’s energy comes from nuclear forces. This would give them their billions of years. The problem is, the sun’s nuclear engine should be turning out a large number of neutrinos. Scientists find only about one-third to one-fourth of the neutrinos that should be there. This mystery is so troubling that scientists have changed their theories about how the sun produces its energy every year or two over the last 25 years! Some of them admit that they really don’t know how the sun produces its energy. The sun is a vital blessing to us. And here we see another blessing, for the sun also keeps us humble. Our Magnificent Creator God has so wonderfully created the sun that even our best scientific minds can’t figure out how it works!!! |
| 8/11/2023 | The strange and nasty plant called witchweed is found mainly in Africa and Asia, but some has been reported in North America as well. This parasitic plant can prevent crop plants from producing yields and is said to be responsible for intensifying the results of famine in Ethiopia. Not long after germination, witchweed sends an enzyme “feeler” through the soil around it to find nearby roots. If the enzyme finds a root system, it will digest a few of the cells on the root surface. The damaged roots actually help the witchweed by sending out a chemical response that confirms their presence to the witchweed. The witchweed then grows an attachment organ to penetrate the neighbor’s root system. However, witchweed cannot penetrate many root systems. If attachment is not made within four days, the witchweed grows aimlessly and dies in less than a week. If the witchweed successfully attaches to a neighbor’s root system, witchweed can enjoy a long and full life, being fed by its neighbor’s roots. In fact, witchweed changes the hormones produced by its neighbor so that the neighbor’s root system grows ever larger at the expense of the stem growth of the victim. While the victim may live its normal span, it will not be allowed enough strength to reproduce. Witchweed is no simple plant. We learn from the witchweed that our Magnificent Creator God’s unlimited imagination not only created some very strange living things, but also created some unique solutions to providing a means of living for them. |
| 8/10/2023 | Not only is the human brain the most complex structure in the universe, it is also one of the busiest. In fact, during intense concentration, your brain can burn as many calories as your muscles do during exercise! Intense thinking can literally be as exhausting as a physical workout! More than 100,000 chemical reactions go on in your brain every second. Among the brain’s many jobs is chemist. The brain produces more than 50 psychoactive drugs. Some of these are associated with memory, others with intelligence, still others are sedatives. Endorphin is the brain’s painkiller and it’s three times more potent than morphine. Serotonin is produced by the brain to help keep our moods under control. The brain also makes dopamine. Dopamine makes people more talkative and excitable. Another hormone regulates hunger. The brain is also a radio transmitter that sends out measurable electrical wave signals. In fact, the brain continues to send these signals for as long as 37 hours after death! Our tiny knowledge of the brain is enough to show us that this incredible organ is no accident. The brain is much more than a powerful testimony to our Magnificent Creator God. Its incredible powers convince us that there is much more to existence than this material life. However, we can learn only from the Word of God about eternal life through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. |
| 8/9/2023 | If, of all the millions of living things on Earth, a few creatures happened to look like something they are not and this helped protect them, we might put it down to chance. However, the creation is filled with too many creatures who practice look-alike deception to put it down to chance. Africa’s southern deserts have a plant called living stones. In a desert, any vegetation can be a welcome source of food or moisture. In this setting, a plant that doesn’t look like a plant has an advantage. And living stones look like nothing more than just another rock in the sand. Wasps can be some of the nastiest insects in nature. An insect in Costa Rica called the mantispid looks very much like the feared wasp, even up close. Then again, the hover fly looks like a wasp and sounds like a wasp because the frequency of its wing beats is almost identical to a wasp. Treehoppers have a very odd body shape that comes to a point on top. Not only do they look like thorns, but they usually stay on bushes that have thorns, orienting their bodies on the branches just like true thorns. This effectively hides them from hungry birds. Larval plant hoppers use a different form of deception. They attach themselves in groups on branches, orienting their frilly and feathery bodies together so they look like a flower! The clever forethought and planning involved in nature’s deceptions rule out any thought that these creatures were not designed by our Magnificent Creator God Himself! |
| 8/8/2023 | One of the spider’s virtues is that it loves to eat flies. However, not all spiders catch flies in their webs. The jumping spider stalks its prey until, like a tiny tiger, it is close enough to pounce. Rather than defining its territory with a web, the jumping spider takes its territory with it in a manner of speaking. Wherever the jumping spider is becomes its territory, When one jumping spider encounters another, they wave their legs at each other, warning each other to back off. Herein lies the tale of how one species of fruit fly is able to outsmart the spider. Unlike most fruit flies, this particular species has stripes on its wings. When it waves its wings over its head, it looks something like a jumping spider declaring its territory. When stalked by a jumping spider, the fly is able to convince the spider that it’s another jumping spider protecting its territory. Researchers have discovered why this trick works even though the fly doesn’t look much like a spider. The spider’s response to the pattern is pre-wired into its brain and is triggered by certain cells in its eyes. These cells are only activated by a display of the pattern. The spider automatically reacts to the pattern. All the fly has to do is fake the pattern and it’s safe! The fruit fly’s strategy requires a sophisticated knowledge of the jumping spider’s nervous system as well as its behavior. It’s safe to say that no fruit fly was able to create this strategy. It could have been authored only by the Magnificent Creator God who created them both. |
| 8/7/2023 | Over the last couple of centuries many Bible scholars have developed a skeptical approach to the Bible. Their treatment of the Bible as nothing more than a human document stems from their belief in evolution. According to them, Christianity has evolved from earlier religions just as humans evolved. As a result, critics reject the idea that the Bible is God’s inerrant, inspired, trustworthy Word. Because they hold this low view of the Bible, they believe that they have found many errors in the Bible over the years. At one time they said that the Hittites mentioned in the Old Testament never existed. They said that ancient biblical writers invented these people so that Israel could make up pretend victories over them. Eventually the Hittites were discovered, one of the first evidences being hard-to-ignore six-foot-tall jars! Over the years these critics have been consistently proven wrong by new discoveries. Likewise, critics have said that the Israelites could not have entered Canaan when the Old Testament says they did. They reason that because the Old Testament mentions the Ammonites, which critics said didn’t live in Canaan until later, the Bible’s dating is in error. However, in the summer of 1989, biblical archaeologists proved that the Ammonites were in Canaan well before the Bible’s date for the exodus. Again Bible critics have been proven wrong. As one biblical archaeologist wrote, “As usual the absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence.” When the Bible says something is true, there is no question of its truth. The Bible truly is the inerrant, inspired, trustworthy Word of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 8/6/2023 | Scientists and manufacturers are studying a new technique that could lead to more durable fibers. This technique manufactures liquid crystals to produce stronger, longer-lasting fibers. The process uses sulfuric acid, temperatures well above the boiling point of water and a high-pressure atmosphere. Meanwhile, another team of researchers finally discovered how orb weaving spiders and silkworms manufacture their silk. Scientists had theorized that silk from spiders and silkworms was stronger by weight than steel because proteins in the silk cross-linked with each other. But after watching silk production and drying in careful lighting under magnification, astonished scientists actually saw what happens. Silk is produced in the silk gland as a thin, watery liquid. Once the protein-rich liquid is released from the gland, the liquid begins to concentrate because of evaporation. As the liquid concentrates, it changes into a liquid crystal state. Scientists have been trying to create fibers in the lab from liquid crystals. They would love to know how the spider does it, using only water at normal temperatures and pressures. This is another example of how our Magnificent Creator God has already solved an engineering problem that we were trying to solve. It is especially interesting that He allowed scientists to discover His solution at the same time that others were trying to solve the problem. This allows us to reemphasize that our world is the work of a Creator and not mindless, natural accidents!!! |
| 8/5/2023 | For many, the existence of so much ice on Antarctica is a grave cause for concern, as they have been told that climate change will cause a lot of this ice to melt and cause the sea level to rise. The worry is that many of the world’s great cities, and many small island nations, could disappear as the Antarctic melts. So why did God make such a troublesome continent which could precipitate the end of the world? Remember that the topography of the world is not the way it was originally created. We have explained previously that there was likely just one main pre-Flood continent, which we call Rodinia. This continent split up during the Flood. The massive deposits of fossil fuels known to exist on the southernmost continent are evidence of pre-Flood forests, probably populated with animals. Every time ice breaks off from an Antarctic glacier, the media worry about flooding – yet God has promised not to flood the world again, nor to bring seasons to an end. Despite seeming to be a homogeneous repository for the 70% of the Earth’s fresh water, locked in as ice, there are considerable variations in climate between different parts of the continent. For every place where ice is melting and breaking up, there are parts where the ice cap gets thicker. Our Magnificent Creator God has all this in balance for His own purposes, and we can be sure He will keep all His promises!!! |
| 8/4/2023 | Humpbacks are among the largest whales in the world. A typical humpback weighs about 40 tons and begins its breach deep down in the ocean. Imagine the acceleration required to get this enormous animal out of the water and into the air. The whale leaves the water at an angle of 30° and a speed of 18 mph. Clearly, this monster uses a lot of energy in breaching, yet it is not unknown for the whale to repeat the exercise – the observed record being 130 leaps in 90 minutes! Why does it go to all this trouble? No one really knows. As with all such obscure phenomena, there are those who suggest that the whales are trying to “attract the girls”! Others suggest that the big splash achieved on re-entry rips some of the barnacles off the whale’s surface. There may be truth in either of these suggestions. But Wilson says that he cannot overlook the probability that the whale breaches simply because it gives God pleasure! He is a Magnificent Creator God, and the world He made is not for utility only, but also for beauty!!! |
| 8/3/2023 | In 1981 it was only a theory—one that seemed to go against all logic. The theory said that if you have a signal, say a sound that was too weak to be heard, adding a little noise would make it easier to hear. If you added too much noise, you would drown out the weak signal. Add too little noise and it wouldn’t help at all. But add just the right amount of noise and a sound signal too weak to be heard could be heard. The theory was shown to be a scientific fact in 1983. This illogical effect was given the name “stochastic resonance.” Since the 1980s, scientists have discovered numerous examples of stochastic resonance and have researched various uses for it. Radio static makes it hard to listen to a station, especially if the signal is weak. However, researchers are building unique radios that add just the right amount of static to make impossible-to-receive stations understandable. Now for the surprise! Did you ever wonder how you are able to select a single voice in a noisy, crowded room and hear what it was saying? Scientists now believe that our brains have built-in stochastic resonance processors much more sophisticated than the units they hope to build someday. As one scientist said, “Nature may have understood stochastic resonance long before we did.” What seems illogical—to add noise to a sound to make it clear—is actually an astonishing piece of wisdom. The wisdom in the way this advanced technical knowledge is used is yet one more witness, not to impersonal “nature,” but to our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 8/2/2023 | Many people know that, despite its appearance, coral is actually a tiny animal. Even a small coral growth may be made up of billions of tiny animals, each living inside its limestone skeleton. What many people don’t know is that coral cannot live without the help of algae—a plant. Thousands of one-celled algae live in the tiny stomach of each coral polyp. The polyp requires the waste products of the algae to complete its nutrition requirements and to get the calcium with which it builds reefs. In return, the polyp’s stomach provides an ideal protected living place for the algae. Incidentally, the wonderful colors in living coral come from the algae in each polyp’s stomach. Evolutionists have said that it must take millions of years for the tiny polyps to build large coral reefs, like the 2,000-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, incidentally, is considered the largest structure ever built by living organisms. However, it has now been shown that coral polyps can double their own weight in just over 10 days! As a result, the claim of millions of years for the age of the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by a factor of 40! Many of the long age figures claimed by evolutionists have had to be drastically revised downward as we have learned more about the work of our Magnificent Creator God. The resulting figures fit the Bible’s account of history much more closely. |
| 8/1/2023 | One unusual argument that the universe is the work of the Creator rather than aimless chance goes like this: only with the highest quality research and work, often over many years, can humans begin to approach the excellence of things in nature. One would think, for example, that it would be a simple job for modern science to create a fireproof fabric better than anything found in nature. After all, no living things in nature— besides humans—crash and burn. However, 80% of those who die in airplane crash fires are killed by the blinding, poisonous smoke, much of which comes from their seat cushions. The foam in the cushion begins to produce toxic smoke when the treated upholstery fabric gives out at 1,300° and allows the flames through. It took two years of work before an upholstery manufacturer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, came up with something better. The new fabric, which has since been used on some airline seats, has stood up to a 5,000° blowtorch flame for several minutes without catching fire! Amazingly, the fabric itself is a very dense weave of wool backed with flame resistant yarns. Its inventor says “It’s one of God’s ideas…There are things about wool that are beyond what man can do.” Sheep have no need to produce wool with properties that could help protect them in a place crash—as would have to be the case if evolution were correct. However, since sheep are part of a larger design in our Magnificent Creator God’s provision for humans, He has given their wool qualities needed by humans as well as by sheep. |
| 7/31/2023 | Scientists have, for the first time, successfully communicated with honeybees in their own language! Scientists have for some time known how to interpret many of the elements of the bees’ so-called “waggle dance.” This dance is used by scouts to communicate the location of food sources to the food gatherers in the hive. A couple years ago researchers decided to see if they could confirm their understanding of bee communication. But how do you talk to a bee and get confirmation that she understood what you said? Scientists decided that the only way to do this was to build a robot bee through which they could communicate. The first attempts at building a robot bee acceptable to real bees did not work well. Early models were viciously attacked. Scientists finally perfected a computer-controlled robot bee that real honeybees accepted. These scientists describe honeybee language as elegant and precise. Yet they found they had learned enough bee language to communicate successfully a food source and its location to real bees. They also discovered that they have much more to learn about bee language. As a result, it may someday be possible for farmers to direct bees to crops that need pollination. Just as bees can best understand other bees, we humans can best understand other humans. That explains why, when our Magnificent Creator God wished to communicate with us, He became a human being. That human, Jesus Christ, taught us about God; and He also made peace with God for us, making possible the forgiveness of our sins!!! |
| 7/30/2023 | There are a number of blurry, indistinct, cloudy-looking objects in the night sky which are not pinpoints of light as the stars are. One hundred ten of these are the so-called Messier objects, which were cataloged by one Charles Messier – a French astronomer who lived from 1730 through 1817. These are a mixture of objects. Some of them we would now call nebulae – quite literally, nebulous clouds of interstellar dust and gas. Examples of these are M8 – the Lagoon Nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius, and M42 – the famous Orion Nebula. Others are star clusters, such as The Pleiades, in Taurus – an object mentioned in the Bible, which is cataloged as M45. Still others are actually other galaxies, such as M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, or M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Why did Messier catalog such a wide variety of different objects without commenting on their differentiation? The answer is that he wasn’t actually interested in those objects. He cataloged them, rather, as a police officer catalogs data from a possible suspect in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. Messier was interested in comets – which also, from a distance, look like blurry objects. The difference is that comets, being Solar System objects, move from night to night, whereas his cataloged objects appear fixed relative to the stars. The Hebrew word for star includes what we call stars today and other objects, such as Messier’s objects. All were made by our Magnificent Creator God and declare His glory. All of God’s creation is magnificent in every way!!! |
| 7/29/2023 | What did God have in mind when He created the human male? The world around us offers many images of what it means to be a “real man.” The world offers us the breadwinner, the tough-guy and the workaholic’s unending push for success. Also, it’s becoming increasingly universal that it is the woman who holds the family together. We can be sure that none of these images capture what God had in mind. If we want to learn some practical lessons about what God intended a man to be, we need to begin with God’s original creation of the first man. The first job given to Adam, the first man, was an intellectual task – identifying and naming the animals. Jesus Christ taught us to call God “our Father.” However, we shouldn’t make the mistake of comparing Him to our imperfect human fathers. Human fathers need to learn from God. What kind of father is He? He’s tough. However, toughness does not mean hurling thunderbolts. True toughness is best shown when love persists despite rejection and disobedience. God never tired of patiently seeking Saul of Tarsus, His sworn enemy. However, while He is loving, God is not a wimp. He has established absolutes that we can depend on. He always keeps His Word. We can be thankful for that because when we look at ourselves we know that we have not been the men or women He intended us to be. His Word of grace in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ assures all who cling to Christ that the perfect and almighty Magnificent Creator God is truly our Father!!! |
| 7/28/2023 | Infants will often look ever so serious as they babble away, as if they’re actually saying something of great importance. Most of us have assumed that they do this because they see others talking and they want to join in. The clue to the fact that there is more to speech than simple imitations came when scientists discovered that infants can babble without ever making a sound. Researchers studied five infants, two of whom were deaf and had deaf parents. In the deaf households, communication took place through American Sign Language. Scientists found that both hearing and deaf children babbled in the language used in their homes. Hearing infants produced sounds, then syllables, and eventually meaningful words. The deaf infants did the same with their hands. At first they would make the hand signs for basic letters and numbers, stringing them together without meaning. Just as the hearing infants were beginning to offer meaningful communication by their first birthday, the deaf infants’ signing had reached the same point by their first birthday. Researchers were shocked when they realized what this means. It means that the brain has some type of unified ability built into it for learning language. This conclusion goes against everything evolution says about who and what humans are. However, it fits perfectly with the Bible when it tells us that men and women were made for fellowship and communication with their Magnificent Creator God. |
| 7/27/2023 | For centuries Asian cooks have wrapped meat, sushi and candy in bamboo bark. Though the reason for this practice seems to have been forgotten, humans evidently once knew what modern science is rediscovering about bamboo. Chemists have succeeded in extracting the natural chemicals in bamboo bark. What they found was not one or two but four natural chemicals in the bark that inhibit bacteria, especially staph germs. These natural antibacterial agents are now under study for possible use as natural food and cosmetic preservatives. If these natural chemicals can be shown to kill bacteria and yet be harmless to people, the door will be open for an entirely new class of natural food preservatives. The question naturally arises about how Asians originally came to use bamboo in the kitchen. Is it possible that thousands of years ago, when ancestors of today’s Asians headed east from the Tower of Babel, humans knew that bamboo would help keep their food from spoiling? Much of what we are learning today was already known to a humanity that was only a few generations removed from our first and once-perfect parents. Remember that the perfection with which humanity was created was more than moral perfection. Because Adam and Eve had a perfect knowledge of God, they also had a perfect understanding of all that He had made. While we cannot be perfect except through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, it is also true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. By the grace of our Magnificent Creator God we are still discovering the many wonders of this world that He spoke into existence in The Beginning. |
| 7/26/2023 | Medical researchers are learning that your thoughts can affect your health. The cells that make white blood cells can be directly controlled by the brain through nerves.Using the language of hormones the brain, as well as individual nerve cells, can direct the abilities of immune cells to kill invaders. Immune cells also communicate back to the brain using hormones. It has been shown that stress and highly emotional states can make this communication less efficient, hampering the immune system. Macrophages are large amoeba-like cells that rebuild injured tissue and devour bacteria, viruses and anything else that should not be in wounded tissue. These amazing little cells can even eat iron filings. But chemicals produced by the body during times of stress, for example during prolonged periods of feeling helpless, actually make macrophages very sluggish. A word of caution. While many New Agers have selectively used some of these findings to promote their pagan ideas about medicine and health, there is nothing mystical going on here. Not only does this link between our brain and our health once again glorify our Magnificent Creator God, it supports biblical truth. In Philippians 4:8 the Apostle Paul advises, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, what-ever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Not only is this advice good for the soul, it is good for the body. |
| 7/25/2023 | Some of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years have to do with our growing knowledge of plant communication. New research continues to reveal even more amazing facts about the exquisite intricacy of God’s marvelous work. Naturalists have long noted that plants often choose to grow at precise spacing from each other and plants of other species. Scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara theorized that this precision might be a result of communication between the roots of these plants. So they devised an experiment to find out. They designed a network of interlocking, partially transparent growth boxes. These boxes allowed them to watch how root growth took place in single plants, two plants of the same species, and plants of different species. They discovered that when burro weed roots neared the roots of the creosote bush, the roots of the creosote bush slowed the growth of the nearing roots. They also discovered that burro weed roots will stop growing when they encounter other burro weed roots. This allows the plants to send their roots out where they will not compete with their own kind. Most astonishing is the discovery that burro weed roots continue to grow if they encounter other roots from their own plant. The amazed scientists noted that this means that even plants may have a sense of self. When the Bible tells us that the whole creation praises its Creator, it certainly suggests that at least every living thing has a sense of itself as well as its Magnificent Creator God. |
| 7/24/2023 | The strange partnership between the snapping shrimp and the goby is absolutely necessary if both creatures are to survive. The nearly blind shrimp relies on the goby, a small fish, in the same way a blind person relies on his Seeing Eye dog. The goby relies on the safety of the complex tunnel system the shrimp digs. The shrimp is well designed for digging. Once a tunnel is started, the shrimp can dig a burrow large enough for both itself and the goby within a few hours. Each of its five pairs of legs is specialized. The first pair of claws is designed for carrying sediment out of the burrow. The second pair of legs is designed to probe for and clean objects as well as scratching sediment from walls. Pairs three, four and five are walking legs that also work well for scratching material from tunnel walls. On its abdomen the shrimp has several appendages that allow it to move rapidly to protection. Other appendages can create water currents that shift sand back from the digging site. The snapping shrimp, which is less than two inches long, can dig a system of tunnels covering several square feet within a few days. The burrow will have several entrances, as much as four feet apart. All lead to a chamber at the deepest point of the system. The Creator has given both the goby and the shrimp different gifts that they both need to live. If they did not share their gifts with each other, neither could survive. Our Magnificent Creator God has given us all special gifts to share! |
| 7/23/2023 | While staying with some family members in Kentucky, I was delighted one dark evening to see little flashes of light in the air, low over the garden lawn. Although I was too far away to see the insects concerned, these must have been fireflies. Fireflies are not actually flies – they are beetles. Their light-producing organs are in their abdomens. Most species use these bioluminescent displays for courtship. The bioluminescence is caused by a type of luciferin molecule, commonly called firefly luciferin. The name has nothing to do with evil! It comes from the Latin word for light. Firefly luciferin reacts with oxygen, and the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, luciferase, as well as the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine triphosphate – the energy-giving molecule ATP. Luciferin first forms another highly tensed molecule called a dioxetane, which releases CO2 to form a ketone. The ketone is in a highly excited electronic state, so it “relaxes” back to normal state by releasing energy. This energy is at exactly the right frequency to be in the visible light range. The fireflies in Kentucky emitted yellow light. If one were an evolutionist, one would have to wonder – what would have been the evolutionary advantage for the beetle to produce luciferase if there was no luciferin, or vice versa? We have a lot more work to do to investigate the chemistry of the process, but we still marvel at the wonder of our Magnificent Creator God’s design for these insects and all of the rest of His Creation!!! |
| 7/22/2023 | Why did the Creator bring together so many precise specifications and high intelligence in the honeybee? To glorify Himself and because bees are crucial to the reproductive cycles of so many plants as well as the food chain. The amazing structure of the honeycomb has amazed scientists for thousands of years. As early as the third century AD, the astronomer Pappus of Alexandria offered an explanation for the six-sided or hexagonal shape of the honeycomb. He pointed out that while the triangle, square and hexagon could all be candidates for the shape of the comb, one of these shapes holds more than the others. The most efficient shape for storing the most honey while wasting the least space is the hexagon. There are many variations of the hexagon that are available to the bee. However, the honeybee is always very precise in constructing honeycomb hexagons, with an obtuse angle of 109°23´ and an acute angle of 70°23´. These angles produce the most usable space for the least amount of building material. Humans are unable to use such precision in their designs without sophisticated equipment. Each honeybee is a tiny but powerful computer that could only have been designed and built by an intelligent Magnificent Creator God. Bees and what they do are of central importance to much of the rest of creation. No wonder God has given them so much: the complex structure of their society, their intelligence and industriousness! |
| 7/21/2023 | There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workman-ship. The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby. The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him. Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time. This astonishing relationship shows us how our Magnificent Creator God’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation. |
| 7/20/2023 | Which of your five senses is most important? Which sense could be lost with the least threat to your life? Most people consider their sense of sight the most important. While the loss of sight is a terrible tragedy, life can go on. Lose your sense of smell and food will be flavorless, but you can get by. Loss of hearing, too, is a great loss, but the loss can be adjusted to. And few people’s lives are threatened by the loss of the sense of taste. However, if you lose your sense of touch, you lose your sense of pain and therefore any warning that you might be injuring yourself. Unfortunately there are people who have no sense of touch. Sometimes they receive life-threatening injuries because they cannot feel pain. Science has shown that touching is necessary for life. Newborn animals that are licked by their mothers have a higher resistance to disease. They are also more likely to live to adulthood than newborns who are untouched by their mothers. Chihuahua pups have a notoriously high rate of death because their mothers are often unwilling to lick them. Lambs will die after birth if their mothers do not lick and nuzzle them. Even human infants who are not lovingly touched enough will suffer from depression, poor sleep, weight loss, poor immunity and, in extreme cases, even death. Our wise Magnificent Creator God has built into us the need for touch. Though we take it for granted, without touch, life would be impossible. |
| 7/19/2023 | If you had painful skin, one of the last things you would apply to it would be hot peppers. Not only do hot peppers burn the mouth, some can even blister the skin. Yet in South America ground hot peppers have been used for centuries to help relieve pain. Scientists have discovered the active ingredient in peppers that relieves skin pain. This sub-stance blocks the pain signals that come from the nerves just under the surface of the skin. The “hot pepper” sauce for skin not only causes no pain, it relieves pain that doesn’t respond to any other treatment. It’s available in creams and ointments that, tests show, relieve pain in two out of three people. Conventional wisdom says that medicines that are found in natural plants were discovered by accident. Someone might accidentally discover a relationship between a person’s having eaten a certain plant and then getting well. They would try the same plants on others with the same disease. If they found that there were more cures, the plant would be remembered as a folk medicine. The “hot pepper” pain reliever for skin tells us that there’s a problem with this theory. People who have a painful skin condition are not likely to apply a pepper sauce. Doing that would be expected to make their skin more painful and cause it to blister. However, it’s possible that our Magnificent Creator God originally gave humans some knowledge of the cures for our ills—cures that He wisely built into creation. |
| 7/18/2023 | Plants make cellulose. Cellulose is a type of natural plastic made of many sugar molecules linked together. Scientists have known for years how to use the natural plastic qualities of cellulose to make things like cellophane and rayon. Scientists have also known that animals generate a similar natural plastic called chitin. Like cellulose, chitin is a carbohydrate made of long chains of sugar molecules. Chitin is found in the shells of all insects and crustaceans, like crabs. Each year the crabmeat industry had thrown away thousands of tons of chitin because scientists couldn’t figure out how to extract chitin from the shells in a usable form. Finally in 1975 scientists discovered how to remove the chitin from shells and change its form so it could be made into whatever forms they needed. Suture thread made from chitin dissolves in the body. This means that stitches don’t have to be removed, and it can be more easily knotted than regular suture thread. Suture thread made from chitin also causes no allergic reaction and it seems to promote healing. It’s hard to believe that a crab shell, which is usually thrown away, could do so much! Food processing companies are even using a chemical made from chitin to recover protein from wastewater. Almost everything in the creation seems to have numerous uses for human needs. This is testimony that our Magnificent Creator God has made this universe for us and that He cares about our needs. In the Bible we learn that He has provided for our greatest need through His Son Jesus Christ. |
| 7/17/2023 | Many cultures around the world have legends about creation and a great Flood that have been handed down from generations in the distant past. Most of these creation and Flood stories sup-port the biblical story of creation and the Flood. The Wallam Olum is the story of creation and the history of the Delaware Indians. It predates the coming of white people or Christianity to North America. The Delaware creation legend reveals an all-powerful creator, who began by creating an earth without dry land, and the heavens including the sun, moon and stars. After dividing the waters from the land, he made all living things, including the first mother. This world was full of joy and had no sorrow until the snake brought wickedness. It concludes by saying that all this happened beyond the great ocean. The Delaware story of the Flood begins with the world filled with evil because of the activity of the evil snake. While the Delaware legend blames the Flood on the snake, a few were saved through the Flood at an island called “Nana,” a name very similar to Noah. While the Wallam Olum is not Genesis, the similarities with Genesis are too many and too exact to be accidental. Similar legends from all over the globe have the same or similar details that they, too, share with Genesis. This can only be explained by the fact that the Bible is accurate in describing how all cultures have shared this common history together. Regardless of what we call Him, it was our Magnificent Creator God to whom we owe it all. |
| 7/16/2023 | Deserts are inhospitable places with little rain—blazingly hot by day and chillingly cold by night. Few plants can survive, but the rock morning glory can. It has large underground tubers resembling sweet potatoes that store water whenever it rains. In times of drought, it’s sustained by the water stored in its twenty or so underground reserves. Jeremiah 17:8 says of those who put their confidence in God: “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit”. Our Magnificent Creator God’s provisions are always sufficient! |
| 7/15/2023 | Solar Cycle 10 – a typical 11-year sunspot cycle, from late 1855 to 1867 – was one of the busiest ever observed for solar activity. British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington had noticed a great deal of activity on the surface of the Sun from August 28th, 1859. On the morning of Thursday, September 1st, he once again pointed his brass telescope at the Sun, and he hurriedly made dozens of rapid sketches of the projected images. Suddenly, he reported that he saw “two patches of intensely bright and white light”. He had just witnessed the largest ever recorded solar event – now named the Carrington Event. Within 18 hours, the Earth was experiencing massive Aurora displays – the northern lights seen at latitudes as far south as Cuba. More interesting was the effect on the telegraph systems. All around the world, telegraph systems failed, operators experienced shocks and telegraph papers caught fire. What would happen if a solar storm the size of the Carrington Event happened today? Earth is surrounded by communication satellites, and most countries of the world rely on computer networks and the Internet. All of these could be damaged or destroyed by another Carrington. The Carrington Event at least shows why our Magnificent Creator God created a magnetic field around the Earth. The Aurora displays at least showed that Earth has some protection against such an unusual event. And no event is truly random! |
| 7/14/2023 | For many people bats bring to mind words like “creepy,” “fangs,” “rabies,” and even “ugly.” However, over 450 years ago Martin Luther marveled at the delicate beauty of the bat. He pronounced the creature an excellent witness to the skill and wisdom of the Creator. God must also like bats. Almost one-fourth of all mammals He created are bats! The flying fox bat has a wingspan of nearly six feet. Bumblebee bats, native to Thailand, are the smallest mammals known, weighing less than a penny. There are brilliantly patterned tropical bats called butterfly bats. And hundreds of species of tropical plants depend on bats as pollinators. Popular legend considers bats a serious part of the rabies problem. The truth is that raccoons, skunks, foxes, and even dogs and cats are more likely to have rabies. In fact, one study shows that in Pennsylvania you are more likely to find a rabid cow than a rabid bat. In reality bats are delicate, helpful and intelligent creatures. A typical North American bat will eat about 600 mosquitoes an hour. Large colonies will consume between 250,000 and 500,000 pounds of insects per night! Bats can be trained, demonstrating their intelligence. And finally, an important warning. If you find sleeping bats, don’t disturb them. Even one such disturbance during sleep can be fatal, since stored nutrition may be consumed by the disturbance before the next feeding cycle. So next time you see a bat, don’t recoil in fear. Rather, say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Magnificent Creator God who made both of you. |
| 7/13/2023 | Some people talk to their plants. But what do you say to a bacterium? Evidently the soybean plant knows just what to say to make bacteria its close friend and helper. Symbiosis means a relationship between two different creatures in which they both help each other. Plants need nitrogen for healthy growth. However, while there is more than enough nitrogen in the air, plants normally can’t make use of that nitrogen. Legumes, like soybeans, link up with bacteria that are able to take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form of nitrogen that plants, including the soybean, can use. In return, the plant creates a nice home for the bacteria in nodes in its roots and provides the bacteria with food. The bacteria need a great deal of oxygen and energy to fix nitrogen into the soil. The oxygen is supplied by heme. If that name reminds you of the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in blood, you’re on the right track. That’s why the heme in the nodules turns them reddish. Who makes the heme, the soybean or the bacteria? When alone, neither creature has any heme. Researchers have learned that the plant performs the first part of the chemistry needed to make heme and the bacterium finishes the job. The plant and the bacterium actually communicate chemically with each other so that production goes smoothly! Communication between such different creatures, allowing them to perform sophisticated chemistry to improve both of their lives, shows how inadequate evolution is to explain life. This arrangement surely glorifies our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/12/2023 | Previously we talked about the Perseverance Mars 2020 mission, which included a helicopter named Ingenuity. Another technology demonstration taken with Perseverance is an instrument for collecting oxygen. The atmosphere on Mars is very thin; its surface pressure is only 1% of Earth’s atmosphere. Of this tenuous Martian atmosphere, 95.3% is carbon dioxide, which is only a trace gas on Earth. There is 2.6% nitrogen and 1.9% argon, with trace amounts of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and noble gases. Despite the rarity of oxygen, NASA engineers believe that their equipment can extract oxygen in sufficient quantities to make human exploration of Mars possible. Which brings us to the subject of life. Previous missions – and indeed photographs – have provided evidence that there was once water on Mars. Even Perseverance’s landing site – the Jezero Crater – appears surrounded by dried water channels. But water and atmospheric carbon dioxide do not make life. Says one NASA scientist, “If we found a microbe that arose on the next planet over, if lightning struck twice in this one corner of the solar system, it would suggest that our whole universe could have life on lots and lots of planets and it’s not just us alone in the dark night.” But his “lightning” did not strike once. Chemicals in lifeforms are not produced by mixtures or even simple reactions. They contain codes and information which could only have been put there by the Magnificent Creator God of the Bible!!! |
| 7/11/2023 | Garlic. Even say the word and some people move away to give you some distance. Others gather around, because to them, garlic helps make the meal. Garlic has begun to attract the attention of medical researchers as well. At the Tagore Medical College in India, researcher Arun Bordia kept track of 432 heart attack survivors for three years. During that time half of the survivors drank the juice from six to ten cloves of fresh garlic each day while others took a garlic scented drink with no garlic in it. Over the three-year period the garlic group had 32% fewer heart attacks and 45% fewer deaths than the other group. Research in the United States with chickens, who metabolize cholesterol in much the same way as humans, suggests a reason for these results. Chickens that were fed aged garlic extract showed a 50% reduction in the kind of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Medical researchers are also looking at some interesting evidence that garlic may help prevent some forms of cancer, especially stomach cancer. When our Magnificent Creator God made the heavens and earth, He knew that humans would disobey Him, destroying the creation with sin. He also knew that in doing so we would bring disease and death into the world. We can thank Him that He stocked the earth with substances that could be used to treat some of the earthly effects of sin. However, we can thank Him even more joyfully that He provided the full cure for sin for each of us in the life, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ! |
| 7/10/2023 | They are the only cells in the human body that repeatedly die and self-regenerate throughout life. And science considers them so interesting that several branches of science are studying them. I am talking about hair cells. As scientists are learning more about hair, they are coming to greater appreciation of, as one researcher put it, hair’s bewildering biology. A Harvard molecular biologist admitted that one of the reasons we know so little about hair is that scientists have avoided studying this complex structure. The average scalp has about 100,000 hairs growing at any one time. Each hair follicle produces hair for about two to five years, followed by a rest period of four to six months. A miniature assembly line of cells divides within the follicle, pushing older hair cells upward through the skin. Pigmentation is added as each new cell is produced. When the follicle is at rest, it shrivels and many of its cells die. However, seed cells, promising new life to the follicle, hide within it waiting for the signal to spring back to life. As humans grow older the resting time of the follicles increases and growing time decreases, especially in men. So if you find yourself balding, you’re not necessarily losing your hair. It’s just that your hair is spending more time resting than it used to. Our Magnificent Creator God tells us that He cares so much about each one of us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head! |
| 7/9/2023 | David Bowie sang about the Spiders from Mars, but by the time you hear this Creation Moment, the sky above the Red Planet could be buzzing with helicopters; well, one helicopter at least. NASA’s Perseverance mission was launched successfully on July 30th, 2020 and was scheduled to land in the Jezero Crater on February 18th, 2021. We probably know much more about this landing site for a robotic spacecraft than we did about the Mare Tranquilitatis Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon in 1969. The surface of Mars has been extensively mapped by orbiting craft. Many landings have taken so-called rovers with them. Perseverance is another such rover and carries seven different sensing instruments. It will even collect a number of samples for returning to Earth, though the Perseverance mission itself will not return; NASA hopes that a mission in 2026 will be able to retrieve the samples. One very interesting extra feature of Perseverance is that it carries with it the very first aircraft to operate in another planet’s atmosphere. Ingenuity is a sort-of helicopter, or perhaps a drone, designed to be able to fly in the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Seven flights of this robotic drone will provide much new information. Unfortunately, the focus of the mission is, once again, the fruitless search for extraterrestrial life. But we will still follow the mission with interest because God made Mars, and what we find there will cause us to praise our Magnificent Creator God all the more! |
| 7/8/2023 | The headline “Scientist Sees Planets with Very Large Telescope” might not excite the imagination until you realize that the Very Large Telescope, or VLT, is actually a thing! It is a huge reflecting telescope, built by the European Southern Observatory in the desert in Chile. It is actually comprised of four telescopes, each of which has a primary hyperbolic mirror about 27 feet across. The result is that the instrument can “see” objects millions of times fainter than those detected by the human eye. Recently, the VLT was pointed at a star rejoicing in the name TYC 8998-760-1, about 300 light years away. It was already known, from calculations, that the star had two planets orbiting it. So the VLT was able to take a magnificent photograph of the stellar system, clearly showing these planets. Both planets are gas giants. The one closer to the star is 14 times more massive than Jupiter, while the other is six times bigger. The planets are 160 and 320 times further from their star than the Earth is from the Sun, compared with just five and ten times the Earth-Sun distance for Jupiter and Saturn. And all of this fits perfectly into the master plan of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/7/2023 | We don’t often think about our sense of smell. While our noses are on the job all the time, we note an odor only when it is unusual. Most of the time the scents around us contribute, unnoticed, to our overall impression of our surroundings. It’s hard to remain tense at the beach. Simply the mention of the water and waves, the sand and sun, brings back the last trip to the beach and starts relaxing a person. However therapeutic these elements of the beach are, scientists have found that the one beach fixture that is probably most responsible for relaxing us is the smell. The smelly chemical that utility companies put in natural gas so that we can smell leaks is methyl mercaptan. This chemical is also produced by rotting meat. The human nose is extremely sensitive to this smell. We can detect as little as one 400-billionth of a gram of it in a quart of air. Doctors have long known that their noses are helpful in diagnosing disease. A person is brought into the emergency room in a coma. It’s very likely that the doctor will smell the patient’s breath as he tries to discover the problem. A sweet smell could indicate diabetes. The smell of ammonia could indicate a kidney malfunction. Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic. Diphtheria can be identified by a sickeningly sweet odor, and people with the plague smell like apples. A patient who smells like freshly baked bread may have typhoid. While we seldom think about our sense of smell, it’s a wonderful gift from our Magnificent Creator God for which we owe Him thanks. |
| 7/6/2023 | When you are ill, you need sleep. And when you are sick you are usually sleepy. Medical researchers are now learning that it’s not accidental that illness and sleepiness go together. In fact, the relationship is one of God’s ingenious designs. Early in this century scientists isolated what they called the S factor—the S being for sleep. Modern biochemists have identified the S factor as a biochemical that is released from the cell walls of bacteria when our bodies destroy them. This chemical finds its way to the brain where it induces sleep. It also stimulates the immune system. Normally the body breaks down some of the harmless bacteria that live in our digestive systems every day. By the end of the day enough sleep factor has collected in our blood to make bedtime welcome. However, when we are fighting a bacterial infection, our body is destroying many additional bacteria and releasing a lot more sleep factor. That sleep factor is also stimulating our immune system to higher levels of activity. Researchers recommend that we give in to our desire to sleep when we are ill. Our immune system and non-dreaming sleep are closely related. In other words, grandma was right when she told us that we would avoid getting sick if we got enough sleep. It’s no accident that bacterial infections trigger the body to react not only to rid itself of bacteria but also to strengthen itself for the fight. This ingenious design is yet another indication that our Magnificent Creator God does care about what happens to us. That love is why He sent His Son to win our salvation on the cross of Calvary. |
| 7/5/2023 | Picture yourself sitting in a friend’s living room. Can you picture in your mind where the door is located? Scientists call this a thought map. Thought maps are mental pictures of the arrangement of objects relative to one another. Thought maps help us remember where to find a water glass, the gas or brake pedal, and home. Thought maps require intelligence. They help make possible additional intelligent activity, such as finding our way around and conducting an intelligent search. This is why scientists have been surprised to find that many creatures, not just humans, use thought maps. One experimenter carried a chimpanzee on his back while he hid 18 pieces of food in a field. Then the chimp and five others were released in the field to find the food. The chimp who had seen the hiding places found most of the food, following a very different route than that originally taken by the researcher. Bees, likewise, use mental maps. Even if a bee is forced to detour on its way back to the hive, it always reports the food source as though it had used a direct route. Bees are also able to find a food source that has been moved after its discovery. Ants have also been shown to use mental maps. Mental maps help humans and animals think deductively about changes in the environment. Mental mapping ability could not have evolved because even the lowliest creature requires this ability to survive. This ability must have been given to them in the first place by their Magnificent Creator God! |
| 7/4/2023 | If, as we are continually told, evolution is a fact, why is it that human technology improves when we copy designs found in nature? If nature is really a giant trial-and-error experiment, we should not only find evidence of less-sophisticated designs in the distant past, but humans today should be able to improve on designs found in nature. Science has long known that an object moving through water or air moves with the least resistance when the ratio of its length to diameter is four to one. This ratio is found in the fastest swimmers in the sea – like the tuna, dolphin and swordfish. A Boeing 707, with a ratio of nine to one, experiences much more resistance than the larger, fatter 747, which has a ratio of six to one – much closer to the tuna and the dolphin. Studies of the vision of the horseshoe crab, supposedly one of the earlier forms of life, have taught engineers how to produce a clearer, sharper television picture. The United States Air Force copied a speed-sensing system from beetles to improve the ground speed indicators of their jets. The optics of a frog’s eye showed them how to improve their radar. The fly’s multifaceted eye taught engineers how to design a lighting system that generates more light with less energy. Humans are learning from and copying design solutions worked out by their Magnificent Creator God. The brilliant designs in our world are not the result of trial and error. This reality makes the claim that evolution is a fact of science sound empty! |
| 7/3/2023 | Though God created the entire living kingdom in only a few days, the variety and creativity of what He made seems nearly unlimited by our standards. One of the more unusual creatures He made was thought extinct until it was rediscovered in 1958. The kakapo parrot lives in New Zealand. The most unusual parrot on earth, it is one of only a few known parrots that prefers to sleep during the day and becomes active at night. Weighing in at five pounds, it is also the world’s heaviest parrot. It is, perhaps not surprisingly, the world’s only non-flying parrot. The Creator’s unusual expression of inventive creativity in designing the kakapo did not end here. The mating habits of the kakapo are especially peculiar for birds. In mating season the males gather in locations that are used year after year for mate selection. Female parrots come to these places to inspect the males to select a mate. However, in most un-bird-like fashion, the males provide absolutely no help building the nest or rearing the young. The kakapo is remarkable because of its many strange traits, most of which would make it least fit for survival. In other words, not only is it an unusual creature, but its more unusual characteristics seem to put it at a disadvantage as far as evolution is concerned. So while evolution would not have made the kakapo, our inventive Magnificent Creator God did, perhaps as a witness against evolution. |
| 7/2/2023 | We have all looked in wonder at the amazing transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. However, did you realize that a moth needs an entirely different kind of brain than a caterpillar? We can truly say that here we have an insect with two brains! In the caterpillar stage, the moth lumbers around in a body that is primarily designed for eating. Its brain must be able to command powerful jaws and a comparatively huge digestive system as well as the complexities of caterpillar locomotion. The world of the caterpillar is very different from the world of the moth. During metamorphosis the caterpillar completely dissolves and the moth is rebuilt from the liquid. The brain, for example, requires new nerve cells and new connections between brain cells, while some brain cells change function, migrate to new locations, or even die. The result is a brain that is 10 times the size of the caterpillar’s and ready to control flight. The moth’s primary purpose in life is to reproduce. So its new brain is able to generate the odors used by moths to identify and communicate with potential mates. It is also equipped to detect the scents of a potential mate. Only our almighty Magnificent Creator God could completely rebuild a caterpillar into a moth. Only He could rebuild and increase its brain ten-fold in only a week or two. Even more amazing is how He remakes people. Through the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ turns us from people who wish to escape Him to new creatures who love Him and find joy in Him. |
| 7/1/2023 | They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. While that is often true, they also say that it takes a highly evolved brain to picture objects and remember them. Science is learning that this bit of evolutionary myth is indeed fiction. As far as the honeybee is concerned, not all flowers are created equal. Some flowers are a good source of nectar while others are a waste of time. Alfalfa flowers can kill a honeybee because they are designed for pollination by larger insects. When an insect lands, a central petal in the flower releases the stamen and sweeps pollen upward to aid pollination. Honeybees can be tossed off the flower or trapped inside by this action. Scientists always thought that honeybees solved the problem of finding safe and productive flowers by remembering a list of characteristics. They believed the honeybee was evolutionarily too simple to remember mental pictures of favored flowers. However, recent experiments have convinced scientists that bees actually store a mental picture of productive flowers. In these experiments, bees were rewarded with sugar water for visiting some patterns and not others. Their reactions showed that they remember images, not simply patterns. What’s more, the experiments showed that bees are quite intelligent and good learners. One scientist noted that these experiments showed that evolution’s assumptions about so-called higher and lower creatures are false. Those who believe in evolution are having to rethink their view of the world. Meanwhile, we can give thanks to our Magnificent Creator God for so generously giving the gift of intelligence to so many of His creatures. |
| 6/30/2023 | Some creatures simply try to look uninteresting to hungry predators. Others take their role-playing so seriously that they actually fulfill some of the same roles as their models. Loopers, or inchworms, move along the ground, twigs or branches with the characteristic opening and closing of an upside-down letter U. These creatures are not true worms. Rather, they are caterpillars. As caterpillars, they often look very much like the twigs or branches on which they move. However, their odd form of movement can give them away. Here’s an experiment you can try. If you ever notice a looper on a branch, simply give the branch a gentle tap. Chances are, the looper will suddenly freeze into the same shape as a nearby twig. If you were to carefully touch the looper, you would find that it had become as stiff as a twig. A botanist reports that while studying one looper moving along a branch, an ant happened along. Ants, of course, will eat loopers. The looper froze in a horizontal position between branches. The ant walked across the looper, never noticing that its walkway was actually a potential meal. Many scientists suggest that the looper “just happens” to be the same color as the branches on which it crawls. We ask, does it also accidentally know how to act like a twig to fool predators? The almighty hand of our Magnificent Creator God is evident even in the inchworm! |
| 6/29/2023 | It is unfortunate that we so often have the sense that nothing technologically important has happened in human history until modern times. This helps maintain the illusion that humans are indeed progressing and evolving upward. Differential gears, allowing a machine to perform two functions simultaneously, were not used in modern times until 1575. However, a model planetarium using differential gears was found in a ship that sank off Greece in 78 BC. While Ben Franklin is given credit for discovering electricity, electric batteries dating from 100 BC have been found in Iraq. The Gate of the Sun is a ten-ton intricately carved stone gate in Bolivia, 13,000 feet above sea level. In Mexico there are boulders with faces carved on them. They were erected between 1250 and 400 BC, carved out of boulders weighing up to 24 tons that were quarried 45 miles away from their present location. How were these giants moved and erected? Joseph Davidovits, a scientist at the Geopolymer Institute in France, believes he may know. He suggests that the builders chemically broke down the stone with acid. Then they carried the liquid stone to the present sites and poured the liquid into molds. In support of his theory, Davidovits points out that some Indians still use this method now, while traces of the acid can still be found in some ancient stone structures. Despite all of our modern gadgets, there is no evidence that humans are any more clever today than they were on the first day they walked the earth when they were placed there by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 6/28/2023 | All insects that hear, except one, have two ears. Some insects have ears on their legs, thorax, or abdomen. However, they all follow the same principle. Their ears are separated so that they can locate the source of the sound – except in one insect. Scientists always thought the preying mantis was deaf. The 1,700 species of mantises have no structure that looks like an ear. Only after a long process of detailed study and testing did scientists finally discover that the mantis can hear. Further investigation finally led to the discovery of one of the most bizarre methods of hearing anywhere in the animal kingdom. The mantis’s hearing organ is difficult to call an ear. Unlike any other insect, the mantis has only one hearing organ, located in a groove underneath its thorax. The teardrop‑shaped groove has a thinner cuticle than other parts of the body. Beneath the cuticle there is a relatively large air sac on each side of the groove. These sacs are connected to the insect’s respiratory system. Near the top of the sac are the nerves that carry the sensation of sound to the nervous system. Scientists say that this hearing organ senses ultrasonic frequencies. When researchers played a bat‑like sound to a mantis in flight, it immediately took an evasive flight path to escape the bat it thought it heard. There is no limit to our Magnificent Creator God’s creativity and His ability to make whatever He can imagine. |
| 6/27/2023 | We want to avoid getting bacteria in our food, don’t we? Bacteria cause illness. Bacteria are bad. Yet, some of the world’s healthiest foods contain deliberately introduced bacteria. One such strain of bacteria is the Lactic Acid Bacterium (LAB). This is used in foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut. Brassicas, such as cabbage, often have low quantities of this bacterium. When sealed in a suitable fermentation jar with salt, the LAB can thrive. LAB is able to withstand high acidity and salinity, so it grows, even in a salty environment. One of the products of LAB’s metabolism is lactic acid. Most other bacteria cannot survive in either acid or salt, so the LAB begins to dominate, while the vast majority of other bacteria die. LAB itself is not harmful to humans, so, paradoxically, the good bacteria have effectively killed off all the bad bacteria, providing a healthy, long-lasting food. When God finished making the world at the end of day six of creation, He looked at all that He had made and declared it to be very good. This must have included bacteria. Since Adam’s sin, many bacteria have mutated (though not evolved, as they have not gained new genetic information) into harmful organisms. Perhaps originally, all bacteria were created to be as useful as LAB in that original perfect world that our Magnificent Creator God gave us and that we so sinfully polluted. |
| 6/26/2023 | It’s commonly known that many animals are able to detect extraordinarily weak odors. The real mystery is how they can smell scents that are 1,000 times too weak to produce the chemical reactions necessary to make a scent signal. From the chemist’s point of view, our sense of smell shouldn’t work as well as it does. When you smelled that wonderful dinner a few days ago, a marvel of chemical reactions was taking place in your nose. Scientists still aren’t sure how we sense such a wide range of smells. It was while investigating this question that scientists may have stumbled across the answer to another question. The receptors in our noses have to detect a certain number of scent molecules before they can trigger the chemical response that makes the signal that tells us we have smelled something. When air is drawn into your nose, an organ called Steno’s duct sprays a fine mist. Scientists always thought this mist simply humidified the incoming air. Now they’ve discovered that the duct also makes proteins that grab onto odor molecules. Sprayed into the incoming air, the proteins collect odor molecules. Then, with their load of odor molecules, they settle onto receptors that trigger your sense of smell. As a result, even scents that are too weak to smell are concentrated by this ingenious system so that we can sense them. Our sense of smell helps protect us, gives our food flavor, and adds richness to the experience of living. It’s truly a marvel of our Magnificent Creator God’s design. |
| 6/25/2023 | “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” One of the most common arguments against a literal six-day creation is that the structure of the days is a literary device, called the Framework Hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests an almost poetic pattern to the days, which they claim demonstrates that the days are not meant to be taken literally. On day one, God made the universe. On day two, He made the seas and atmosphere, and on day three He made the land, with its plants. Then on day four, He filled the universe, day five filled the sea and atmosphere, and day six filled the land. So there are three days of creating ex nihilo and three days of filling those creations. Again, the advocates of this hypothesis maintain that this pattern shows that Genesis 1 is allegorical literature, proclaiming the truth of God as Creator, but does not give a historical account. A quick answer to this point is that if there is a real pattern of two sets of three days, this does not prove that the days are no |