| 12/31/2023 | How would you like to live in a neighborhood where garbage was never collected and taken away? What if there was no provision in the creation for getting rid of waste? By now the Earth would have become a filthy mess!Our sewage and other waste does not break down all by itself. Without microbes, waste would simply continue to pile up. But if you were designing a world in which waste would have to be “taken away,” how would you do it? It’s hard to imagine a solution to the problem that is better than the solution God provided. The creatures that dispose of our waste are microscopic – an improvement over our big, noisy garbage trucks. But microbes don’t simply break down garbage into harmless materials. In His wisdom, God designed them to turn useless garbage into useful substances.We are now beginning to make more use of what God has designed. A West German corporation now markets a ceramic sponge that is home to countless organisms that not only love highly polluted water, they turn the pollution into useful things like natural gas and alcohol. Scientists say that the bugs eat almost anything, even pollutants that cannot easily be handled by usual sewage treatment.Whether we recognize it or not, we humans continue to learn at the feet of the Magnificent Creator God who made us – which is, itself, an argument against evolution. |
| 12/30/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/29/2023 | 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. |
| 12/28/2023 | 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! |
| 12/27/2023 | One interesting way in which to help young people gain an appreciation for God’s creation is to ask them to solve certain problems that the Creator Himself had to solve.Let’s use the examples of seeds. Plants need seeds to produce the next generation. But what about all the insects that feed on seeds? As Creator, one could decide that insects will not eat seeds. But what will insects eat? Can we get rid of insects? If we do, what will we create to do all the important jobs that insects perform in the ecology? The conclusion must be that we need insects, and they need to eat something. Seeds are a convenient food for them. So how do we design seeds so that both plants and insects can benefit?Left to their own to work out this problem, perhaps in small groups, young people are likely to propose two popular solutions. A plant can be designed to make so many seeds that insects could not possibly eat them all. Or some plants could be designed that produce seeds that have a natural insect repellent.And both of these solutions to the problem are commonly found among seeds. Studies show that plants that produce so many seeds that insects could not possibly eat them all generally do not produce seeds that are poisonous to insects. But plants that produce fewer and larger seeds often produce seeds laced with natural insect repellents. As a result, insects get to eat and plants are allowed to produce the next generation.And again we see that our Magnificent Creator God worked out the best solution for all involved. |
| 12/26/2023 | 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! |
| 12/25/2023 | Many different creatures, from mice to insects, eat seeds. The tropical forest offers the greatest variety of seeds found anywhere in the world. The problem is that among this great variety are seeds that are poisonous and others that are hard as rocks. Yet, even these seeds are used for food by some creatures.One vine like legume that grows in the jungle produces seeds that are highly poisonous to insects. Yet, there is one beetle that is able to eat these highly nutritious seeds – even gaining extra nutrition for itself from the poison.The Hymenaea protects its seeds another way. Hymenaea seeds are locked within a very tough, woody pod that no one in the tropical forest is interested in eating – if they can even get it open. But one mouse that lives on the jungle floor is up to the task. This small mouse opens the pods and stores the seed in its pouch like cheeks. Back in its nest, the mouse bites a small notch in the hard seed to help it absorb water. He then buries it in his den. Before long, the seed germinates and the mouse has a tasty and tender seedling to eat.Evolutionists tell us that farming was one of the major advances that helped primitive humans become modern. How, then, do they explain mice who not only farm but who know how to improve the germination of their crops? A better explanation is that our Magnificent Creator God shared this bit of farming wisdom with the mouse when He made it. |
| 12/24/2023 | Relationships among creatures who are often very different from one another are so numerous – and so intelligent – that they witness to an overall design for living things. Even evolutionists recognize this when they talk about the “grand design” of the living world. And if design is that evident, there must be a designer. But there’s even more to the matter than seeing a designer.Some of the most ferocious wasps in the world live in the tropical forests of Costa Rica. These wasps are social, building a huge nest that can be two feet long and one foot across. They are short tempered and highly protective of the tree in which they build their nest. Most other creatures give these wasps and their tree plenty of room.But one other creature also calls the tree home – the katydid. These long horned grasshoppers spend much of their day sitting in the wasps’ tree. The wasps don’t bother the katydids because they offer no threat to the wasps. At the same time, none of the katydids’ many predators dare come close to the tree because of the wasps. In one research project, scientists removed the wasp nest from a tree that was home to many katydids. A few days later the katydids were gone from the tree as well.The relationship between these wasps and the katydids is called symbiosis and shows more than intelligence and design in the creation. It shows that our Magnificent Creator God cares about everything He has made, reminding us that He desires a loving relationship with each of us! |
| 12/23/2023 | 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. |
| 12/22/2023 | 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. |
| 12/21/2023 | If we could harness all of the sun’s energy that reaches the Earth, we would have more than enough energy to fill all our energy needs – even if the entire world became as industrialized as the west. Yet, less than 0.10% of all of the sun’s energy output reaches the Earth! What is going on within the sun to create so much energy?Most people have heard that the sun produces its energy through nuclear fusion. And even though most scientists think this is true, they admit that the real answer isn’t that simple – and the full answer is unknown. If the sun produces its energy by nuclear fusion, one of the results of that process is a tiny particle called a neutrino. But, in fact, the neutrinos that should be coming from the sun are not. Worse, new calculations of the temperature needed for the sun to ignite into the nuclear fusion process show that the evolutionary theory for how the sun formed does not generate enough heat for fusion.An alternate theory says that the sun’s heat is a result of its powerful gravity pulling the sun in on itself – called gravitational collapse. This would explain why the neutrinos are missing. But evolutionists have rejected gravitational collapse because if this is where the sun’s heat comes from, the sun could not be billions of years old.Despite our scientific sophistication, many of our Magnificent Creator God’s works still defy our understanding! |
| 12/20/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/19/2023 | The frogfish is yet another strange creature for which those who believe in evolution can find no history. Not only do evolutionists admit that frogfish are not related by evolution to any other creature, but also they can find no relationship among 35 of the 41 known species of frogfish!Frogfish live in many different shallow sea areas. They are called frogfish because they have a wide mouth and face like a frog. In addition, their front fins are on the ends of what appear to be very fat frog legs. Yet they also have a fleshy lure, suspended on sort of a pole coming out of their forehead, like the deep water angler fish. And like the angler, the frogfish uses this bait to lure lunch close to its mouth.Like the platypus, the frogfish unites very different characteristics of several creatures into one unlikely but imaginative creation. Evolutionists are unable to imagine an evolutionary history for this creature. What’s more, they cannot figure out how most of the 41 different species of frogfish they have designated might be related to one another.The frogfish is a dramatic testimony to the fact that our Magnificent Creator God has created all creatures according to His unlimited creativity, fully formed and so unique that sometimes evolutionists cannot even invent an evolutionary history for them. |
| 12/18/2023 | Nearly everyone is familiar with the way in which the whistle of a train moving toward them lowers in pitch as the train passes. The change in pitch is caused by the change in the movement of the train relative to the listener. First it is moving toward the listener, but after it passes it is moving away. This change in pitch is called Doppler shifting. Now let’s apply this principle to the bat’s echolocation system.Bats are most sensitive to certain frequencies as they listen for the echo of their high pitched squeak. If you are a bat, you listen for echoes from stationary objects around you, like trees, as well as moving objects, such as an insect that is about to become lunch. Because of the differences in the movements of these objects relative to your flight, Doppler shifting changes the pitch of returning echoes. That change could place a returning echo outside the range of frequencies to which you are most sensitive.Scientists have discovered that the bat solves this problem by calculating the expected change in frequency due to Doppler shifting and then altering his squeak so that the returning echo is at the needed frequency! How many of us could do that without a computer and other sophisticated equipment?Amazingly, our Magnificent Creator God has gone so far as to make the bat a bit of a physicist so it can make its living. What an elegant testimony to God’s wisdom and generosity! |
| 12/17/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/16/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/15/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/14/2023 | We hear it often: Christian values are to blame for most of the problems in society. Marriage is ridiculed as “just a piece of paper”. Strongly held convictions of right and wrong are said to be to blame for arguments, fights and wars. And by all means, we must free ourselves from old fashioned attitudes about sex and marriage.Scientific support for these “liberated” values goes back to 1928 when Margaret Mead spent nine months in Samoa, then wrote a book. In it she said that Samoans live a happy, carefree life. Not only is crime virtually unheard of but even young people pass through their teen years without becoming rebellious. Mead, writing as an anthropologist, said this was because Samoans practice complete sexual freedom and avoid having strong convictions about religious and philosophical matters. For more than 50 years, Mead’s writings have been cited as scientific support for anti Christian values.But now an anthropologist who has spent many years in Samoa has come forward with a book that says things in Samoa are almost exactly the opposite of what Mead reported. The Samoans themselves asked him to correct the record because almost nothing Mead wrote about their values was accurate. Samoans are very puritanical about sex, and parents are strict with their children and competitive with each other.How foolish humans are to think they can invent better moral values that produce more happiness than those values their Magnificent Creator God gave them. And what a shame that so many have based their lives on a lie because they wanted to believe that “nature” made them. |
| 12/13/2023 | In Psalm 148:3, the sun, moon and stars are specifically encouraged, along with the rest of creation, to praise God. And truly, God, as our Creator and our Savior through Jesus Christ, is worthy of all praise. But perhaps many Christians have been a little too ready to accept this biblical language as figurative.Based on scientific principles discovered by Isaac Newton, a creationist, a new science has developed today that studies sound waves on the sun. The vibrations on the sun’s surface can be measured as the surface of the sun moves. Scientists studying these movements on the seething surface of the sun have learned with the help of computers that the sun actually rings like a bell! They have found that the sun rings over so many frequencies that there are several million resonances going on all at the same time.Truly, the sun is making a glorious sound to the Lord! Scientists have long known that the Earth does the same thing. And we have learned that the moon, too, has its own song. So next time you read in Scripture about the creation – the sun, moon and Earth – praising God, don’t dismiss the words as figurative!And once more, when the scientists finally arrived at some knowledge, they found that the Bible had already been there – for thousands of years. That alone is a great reason for us to join the sun, moon and Earth in praising our wonderful Magnificent Creator God! |
| 12/12/2023 | The number of different kinds of insects in the world seems almost endless. There are millions. The larva of many of these insects feed on trees and bushes at least until they develop into adults. One would think, then, that we wouldn’t have any trees left, since they are so unfairly outnumbered by such hordes.But we also know from experience that the creation has been designed with careful and intricate balances. In this case, the many different kinds of trees each produce poisons in order to protect themselves from insects. But there is still balance, since insects, too, need to make a living. Not every insecticide produced by a tree is poisonous to every insect. So a tree’s insecticides simply limit the number of insects that can feed on it.Some trees have pockets of gluey fluids that, when opened by insect mandibles, glue the insect’s mouth closed – a very effective way of keeping something from eating you! But most of the insecticides manufactured by trees involve subtle and complex chemistry. One poison fools the insect’s system into thinking that it is an essential amino acid – with fatal results.Where could such advanced knowledge of chemistry come from? For that matter, could such precise balance – that allows for life but keeps it in control – arise all by itself? As our knowledge of science grows, our appreciation of our Magnificent Creator God’s work of creation only increases! |
| 12/11/2023 | Australia has many animals that are not found anywhere else in the world today. One of the most unique is the wombat, which looks like a small bear with brown fur. The wombat is a burrowing animal.Like many of Australia’s animals, the wombat is a marsupial, having a pouch in which its prematurely born young complete their development. The pouches owned by most marsupials are open at the top toward the mother’s head. This works fine for the kangaroo and other marsupials – no one ever saw a kangaroo standing on its head.But the wombat is a burrowing animal. If its pouch opened toward the mother’s head, it would very quickly fill with dirt, which wouldn’t do the young wombat inside the pouch any good. So, unlike most marsupials, the wombat’s pouch opens toward the animal’s hind legs – it points backward!The marsupial’s pouch is a wondrous enough invention all by itself. But this pouch is a clear case of a specialized intelligent design for a unique situation. If the wombat’s backward pouch had been produced by mutations, how would baby wombats have gotten by during the millions of years of trial and error needed to redesign the pouch? It’s easy to see the wombat’s backward pouch as a humorous hint from our Magnificent Creator God that human theories simply cannot replace the account of creation that He has revealed to us in the Bible! |
| 12/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/9/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/8/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/7/2023 | Evolution says that life began with the simplest forms. It took over a billion years just to evolve algae and another billion years for living things to have more than one cell. It took half a billion years of slow development to generate today’s creatures. And evolution says that this story comes from the fossil record.What most people do not know is that there is no such story in the fossil record. And when not writing textbooks or appearing on television, evolutionary scientists will admit that their story of life cannot be found in the fossil record. According to the fossil record, every major family alive today appears suddenly and fully formed in the Cambrian rocks, which contain the first clear evidences of developed life.Charles Darwin was aware of this. Believing his own theory to be true, he called this problem a real mystery and wrote that it is probably a valid argument against evolution. Darwin wrote that he expected the problem to be solved as more fossils were discovered. But today, well over a century later, the problem remains and was written about in recent history in the Scientific American.So, Christians should not feel intimidated by the claims of scientists. We Christians have our faith by which we interpret what we see in the world. But the evolutionary story of life and the fossils is nothing more than the interpretation of the world according to evolutionary faith. We agree that far greater faith is required to believe in the revelation of Charles Darwin than to believe the revelation of our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 12/6/2023 | 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!!! |
| 12/5/2023 | A young student once asked Martin Luther what God was doing before He made the creation. Luther is said to have responded by telling the young man, “He was making switches to use on children who ask foolish questions.” Now some evolutionary physicists are asking what the universe was like before the big bang.Traditional big bang theorists have always said that there was nothing before the big bang. However, all evolutionary physicists know that the big bang theory has some major problems. For instance, in the earliest moments of the big bang, theory says that the universe would have had an infinite density and temperature. Another problem is that no known physics applies to these earliest moments of the universe. A physicist with the European Laboratory for Particle Physics proposed that the universe did exist a long time before the big bang. He theorized that it was just large enough so that it was not infinite in temperature or density and about one sixteenth of an inch across. He further theorized that the universe existed for a long time in this condition. He described the pre-big bang universe as being in the simplest state that you could imagine, a condition he called “the state of triviality”. Traditional physicists point out, however, that the theory is also filled with unprovable assumptions.The real lesson here is that neither the big bang theory nor any other theory that we can conceive can account for the universe. Only our Magnificent Creator God’s hand can explain the universe we see. |
| 12/4/2023 | Over the past several years, scientific studies of women by the Population Research Institute have shown that those who have had abortions increase their risks of infertility, breast cancer and other problems. Now, a study released by the Population Research Institute reveals a whole new category of risks associated with abortion.The researchers learned that among girls from 15 to 18, pregnant or not, for those who have had an abortion, the chance of major depression rises from 31 percent to 78 percent. The same pattern appeared for anxiety, where, for young girls who had had an abortion, the likelihood of anxiety neuroses was doubled. The pattern also showed a doubled rate of thoughts of suicide for girls who had had an abortion as compared with those who became pregnant but had not had an abortion. A similar study of women in New Zealand had the same results. Two studies by the Elliot Institute showed that women who had an abortion were three times as likely as those who had not to be plagued with anxiety and to abuse drugs.These studies show scientifically that it is time to stop accepting the mental health of the mother as justification for abortion. Researchers find that abortion causes mental health problems; it does not prevent them. More than this, of course, abortion is contrary to our Magnificent Creator God’s will because it takes a life. |
| 12/3/2023 | There is nothing our Creator God does that is not intended to bring us closer to Him. Why? Because His purpose in making humans was to make someone to love. We exist because He wanted to love us and be loved by us. There is nothing visible or invisible that is not meant to be of service to us. Consider the invisible angels who protect us. They rejoice when even one person turns to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.Consider the heavens above our heads. There, God placed billions of stars – some much larger than our sun. There are giant pinwheel galaxies with millions of huge stars. Countless billions of stars churn out more energy every second than we can ever hope to measure. What a lavish and beautiful timepiece to tell us when it is time to plant and time to harvest! God has given us more than the necessities of life. He has also hidden medicines within the bark of trees and the sweet-scented flower. He has filled that creation with splendor and beauty.However, I cannot neglect to mention His greatest and most generous gift. When we sought our will instead of His, we withdrew our love from Him. His response was to send His only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer our punishment for sin on the cross. And He rose from the dead on the third day so that we could have new life with our Creator again. Oh, that our thanksgiving to our Magnificent Creator God could be as unlimited as His generosity! |
| 12/2/2023 | 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! |
| 12/1/2023 | Most have heard of the little “cleaner fish” or wrasse that clean the teeth of larger fishes. New research on the behavior of these fishes shows that they are not always honest-business fish. Other fish, including those who might ordinarily consider a meal of “cleaner fish”, actually stand in line for their services. That’s because they need to have parasites and diseased tissue removed. They also know that the little “cleaner fish” offer massages.It’s amazing enough that even potential predators will become clients for a good cleaning and massage. Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England observed 28 cleaning stations and discovered some unexpected behavior. Now and again, as a “cleaner fish” nibbles parasites off a customer, it might also bite out a chunk of healthy flesh. Wisely, they avoid this behavior when cleaning predators that could bite them back. Researchers also observed that potential customers were aware of this risk and closely watched how the current customer was being treated. They were more likely to seek services from a wrasse that didn’t nip any of the customers ahead of them. Of course, the wrasses were also aware of this and were observed to offer those customers they were likely to nip four-star treatment, including a massage.Scripture teaches that man’s sin infected the whole creation. Thankfully, our Magnificent Creator God came to bring us forgiveness. |
| 11/30/2023 | If you enjoy keeping tropical fish, the Mantis shrimp is one creature you may not want to keep in your aquarium. While this creature is related to common shrimp, it has a very unusual and specialized feature.In the wild, if the Mantis shrimp finds a tasty snail, it cocks its spring-loaded forearm and shatters the snail’s shell. The forearm has moved through the water at 50 miles per hour – so fast that it causes cavitation as well as heat and a flash of light as the bubbles collapse. And, yes, the Mantis shrimp can break the glass walls of an aquarium! To do this, the shrimp must generate over two-hundred thousand watts of power per pound of muscle, something no other muscle can do. The shrimp accomplishes this seemingly impossible task by storing the energy generated by the muscles. The shrimp first locks the arm and then contracts its muscles. The energy stored in this way would damage the arm if it weren’t for a very clever spring design. This saddle-shaped spring can accumulate enormous quantities of energy without breaking as it compresses. When the shrimp is ready to strike, it simply releases the spring.The Mantis shrimp’s forearm is only an effective working unit when all of its specialized parts are working together. It is difficult to imagine how or why our Magnificent Creator God chose to include this in His Master Plan but He did and it definitely serves a purpose – we just may not know why until we’re in Heaven. |
| 11/29/2023 | Those who fear global warming blame any climate changes upon man’s activity, including the raising of cattle for food. The digestive system of all ruminants, including cows, produce methane gas as part of the digestive process. Methane is considered one of the greenhouse gases that change the Earth’s climate. Some have even suggested ways of limiting the methane produced by cows.Methane is produced in a chemical reaction that scientists have always believed must take place in the absence of oxygen. That’s why they were surprised to find living plants making methane. It should be added that the researchers took great pains to ensure that the methane they were measuring was produced by the plants and trees and not by microbes in the soil. While they are unsure of the chemistry involved, they did find that more methane was produced with higher atmospheric temperatures. This finding explains large methane plumes that have been identified over tropical forests. Based on their findings, they estimate that 20 percent of all atmospheric methane comes from plants and trees. That’s about 150 million metric tons a year!Since God has created the Earth for life, He has built balances into it that can deal with the by-products of life, including methane. We can trust our Magnificent Creator God’s promises that man will be here on Earth, planting and reaping, until its history ends. |
| 11/28/2023 | Could a plant devise a special growth for itself so that it becomes inviting to its only pollinator? If evolution were true, how could such a plant survive until it could learn enough about its pollinator, and about genetics, to evolve a special growth just for that pollinator.Those sound like silly questions, but if evolution is true, they must be answered, and answered scientifically. A South African plant called the “Rat’s Tail” grows a seemingly purposeless spear that extends near its flowers. Theorizing that the spear might be a bird-perch for a pollinator, scientists closely watched some of the plants in the wild. They learned that the only bird that seems interested in pollinating the plant is a bird called the “Malachite Sunbird”. The scientists then removed the spikes from some of the plants. The result was that male sunbirds were far less likely to visit and pollinate those plants. As a result, perchless-plants only produced half as many seeds as plants with perches. Researchers pointed out that this arrangement makes sense because male sunbirds have long tails that can be damaged by ground landings.However, if we conclude that the Rat’s Tails were created for the sunbirds, and the sunbirds for the Rat’s Tails, we don’t have to find natural explanations for such silly questions. This is simply another of our Magnificent Creator God’s clever designs. |
| 11/27/2023 | Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26Jesus urged the disciples to “Behold the fowls or the birds of the air…” In a world fraught by worry and fear, His words of advice are good for today. Do you ever consider the sparrows that flit overhead, or the tiny warblers that migrate thousands of miles year after year with a built-in sense of radar?Keith Monroe wrote the following about our feathered friends, and his words bear repeating. He begins by asking the question, “Ever wonder about the mysteries of birds? Take an idle hour and stroll into a public library, browsing through some books on the subject. You will be amazed by these strange creatures.“Long engagements before marriage are common in birdland. English robins pair up in January, but do not mate or start housekeeping until spring. Jackdaws and wild geese get engaged the spring after they are born, although neither species become sexually mature until a year later. Most birds are faithful to their mates for life. Some are as thoughtful as human husbands about saying it with flowers. Starlings carry petals and buds to the female in the nest. A herring gull will pluck a sea pink and lay it solemnly before his betrothed. But the little nuthatch may be the courtliest swain of all birds. He selects choice sunflower seeds and proffers them to his intended. If she scorns him, he becomes even more gallant; he shucks each seed before presentation.“Pliny, the Roman naturalist, formed an expert opinion that swallows turn into frogs. Each year, he noticed, there came a morning when all swallows were gone. Everybody knew that birds do not fly in the dark, so they must become frogs. Not until the 18th Century did ornithologists begin to realize that birds do fly at night, by thousands. Ever since, bird experts have been trying to fathom the avian ‘homing instinct’ and ability to navigate to destinations chosen by previous generations.“Banded Manx shearwaters have been brought in covered boxes to Boston, then released at separate points. Each flew alone over trackless seas for more than 3,000 miles, finding its way home to its little burrow in cliffs along the west coast of Wales. Could any human do as well without maps and instruments?“What inner compass guides the arctic tern each spring as it travels 11,000 miles to near the South Pole to its nesting grounds in Antarctica? How do storks from Copenhagen find their way across the Mediterranean and down the length of Africa to their favorite swamps in Bechuanaland?“Some experts think that birds keep checking their position by the sun, which would give them the equivalent of an inborn sextant and clock for dead reckoning. But what about cloudy days? The answer is that birds’ eyes are so sensitive to ultraviolet rays that they know exactly where the sun is behind the darkest clouds.“On the other hand, tiny warblers migrate long distances at night. If blown off course they adjust as accurately as day-flying birds do. Even those that are born in cages and spend their lives without ever seeing the sky can set off from Germany all alone, travel southeast across the Balkans, then turn due South to reach their winter home in central Africa.”Monroe concludes, “I do not want to disparage mankind, but are we not rather dumb about navigation compared to our feathered friends?” “Consider the birds,” said Jesus. Yes, look at the birds. If our Magnificent Creator God takes care of them, you can trust Him to take care of you. |
| 11/26/2023 | Chickens aren’t the brightest creatures in the animal world, but the mother hen knows to protect her eggs and keep them warm. Many species of snakes also care for their young. Amazingly, scientists have learnt that even some plants have been designed with “motherly” instincts.The plantain is a common North American weed, and when it blooms, the warmer it keeps its developing seeds, the more seeds its offspring will produce. Researchers have found that cooler air temperatures cause the mother plant to produce a darker bloom cluster. The darker color absorbs more radiant energy from the sun, and this gives its offspring a boost in life even before they sprout. The shooter plant, as it is commonly called in America’s southeast, does something similar. It blooms for several months over the southern summer. The leaf-like bracts that sheathe each flower-cluster have a brown pigment. Researchers observed the plants over several months and found that the bracts that formed in cooler April were darker than the bracts that formed in warmer June. The increased levels of brown pigment in April enabled the bracts to absorb more infrared light that helps to warm the flowers.Just where did those plants learn the necessary physics, not to mention the genetics, to produce these motherly provisions? Of course, the answer is our Magnificent Creator God’s Intelligent Design from the very start. |
| 11/25/2023 | “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. |
| 11/24/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/23/2023 | Can you imagine a plant that moves so fast that science didn’t know what it was doing until recently? The plant is a forest wild flower found in North America and called the Bunchberry dogwood.A few botanists had noted a strange “poof” associated with the plant, but no one knew what was going on. Researchers at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, were studying the plant when they experienced the “poof.” Wanting to track down what the plant was doing, they got a high-speed video camera that can shoot 1,000 frames per second. Amazingly, that camera was too slow to clearly catch what the plant was doing. So they got a higher-speed camera that could shoot 10,000 frames per second.When they reviewed the video, they discovered that the flower was releasing pollen at an amazing speed. They calculated that the gravitational force on the pollen as it is released is 800 times the force astronauts endure when they blast into space. This wonder is accomplished by the flowers’ very elastic petals which are part of a design that looks like a trebuchet – a medieval catapult.The amazing wonders of our Magnificent Creator God’s creation should lead us to unceasingly praise Him, something which belief in evolution does not allow. Even if you try to add God to evolution, chance and natural forces still get the credit. |
| 11/22/2023 | Ask any evolutionist, and he will tell you that the Venus Flower Basket is one of the least-evolved animals. This animal is actually a sponge that is made up of a colony of creatures, and it does some amazing things.The Venus Flower Basket builds a basket-like skeleton made up of glass-like silica covered only by a thin layer of cells. The intricate internal structure of this skeleton is reinforced to provide the greatest strength using the least amount of material. The resulting skeleton turns out to be a fiber optic network whose sophistication has been compared to modern fiber optics used for telecommunications networks.Symbiotic luminescent microorganisms make a home inside the base of the sponge, sending their light throughout the Flower Basket’s fiber optic skeleton. The Flower Basket traps shrimp inside this skeleton, where they spend their entire lives. The food they drop feeds those luminescent microorganisms at the bottom of the basket. The purpose of the light pulses is to attract prey to feed the shrimp, who, in turn, feed the source of the light pulses! All of this is even more impressive, given the fact that the Flower Basket has no nervous system whatsoever.That this beautiful creature with no nervous system is designed and works in such an intricate manner is a powerful testimony to our Magnificent Creator God, the only One Who could design this. |
| 11/21/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/20/2023 | Homing pigeons are valued because of their highly developed sense of direction, and this includes the ability to read the Earth’s magnetic field. Some other birds, turtles and even a few salamanders have also shown this same ability. However, bees, ants or people are not born with this ability.Until now, those animals classified as “lower animals” on the evolutionary scale were not expected to have such navigation abilities. However, this ability has now been confirmed in – of all things – the Caribbean spiny lobster. Researchers collected more than 100 lobsters from various locations; each lobster was tagged with a number indicating the exact location of their discovery. They were then placed in closed containers and boated about in circuitous routes for an hour so that they would not remember the direction of home. To further confuse the lobsters, some of the containers contained magnets. Each lobster was then fitted with a removable hood so that they were effectively blindfolded. They were then placed in a large tank to see which direction they would naturally seek. Typically, the lobsters would begin trying to walk home, aiming to within three compass degrees of where they were captured.Scientists were surprised that a so-called “lower invertebrate” has a navigation system as sophisticated as a homing pigeon. But they shouldn’t be surprised. The same wise Magnificent Creator God made both creatures. |
| 11/19/2023 | Ethicists who believe in evolution are trying to figure out an evolutionary explanation for why people universally have a sense of right and wrong. This line of study is so new that it doesn’t yet have a name, although some have suggested “neuroethics” or “moral neuroscience”.Much of this study began by looking at the theories of philosophers John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. Mill taught that moral good is defined by those actions that do the most good for the most people, even if some individuals must suffer in the process. Kant said that moral good could be defined by pure reason. Then they add in philosopher David Hume, who taught that people consider an action to be good if it makes them feel good.However, researchers in this field noted that even monkeys, who don’t read philosophy, have a sense of fair play. In one experiment, monkeys who had been accepting cucumbers as a reward began rejecting the cucumbers after they saw other monkeys getting much tastier grapes. At this point in this new “science”, some researchers have concluded that right and wrong are nothing more than the instinctive firing of brain neurons.Scripture, on the other hand, says that our Magnificent Creator God has written His law on our hearts. This is a much more logical explanation of Man’s universal sense of right and wrong. |
| 11/18/2023 | 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. |
| 11/17/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/16/2023 | The scientific establishment is firmly convinced that Man evolved from the higher apes millions of years ago. For this reason, rhesus monkeys have long been used not only for pharmaceutical trials but in psychological tests to determine how Man’s intelligence evolved.Researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, wanted to know if rhesus monkeys could count, and they set up an experiment to find out. Using two television screens, one showed two monkeys vocalizing and the other showed three. However, the audio of each television could be controlled so that in some trials two monkeys could be seen but three voices heard and vice versa. Each one of the 20 test monkeys spent more time watching the matching number of monkeys and voices. The researchers concluded that the rhesus monkeys could tell the difference between the numbers two and three.They also pointed out that that the monkeys can count small numbers because this ability relates to their social worlds. Yes, and by the same token, some insects can count to hundreds, but none of this means that Man is related to insects or monkeys! Scripture carefully distinguishes between Man and animals. Our Magnificent Creator God placed Man over the animals and gave him an eternal soul that is saved by His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| 11/15/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/14/2023 | The last creature a rattlesnake wants to see is the California ground squirrel.When an adult ground squirrel finds a rattlesnake, it begins to taunt the snake. The squirrel dashes into striking range, whips its tail about, bites the snake’s tail and kicks sand on it. While a rattlesnake can strike with lightning speed, the little ground squirrel is even faster and well able to dart out of the way. Even if it was bitten, the venom wouldn’t kill it since these squirrels have proteins in their blood that detoxify the poison. Frustrated snakes have been known to simply retreat when faced with this treatment.Researchers have learned that the squirrels’ bag of tricks is even deeper. Rattlesnakes can see heat as infrared light. When the ground squirrel is taunting the rattlesnake, it sends additional blood to its tail, causing it to heat up, producing a very obvious infrared image for the snake, further confusing it. Interestingly enough, when the ground squirrel taunts a gopher snake, which cannot detect the infrared, it does not heat its tail.How does the squirrel know that the rattlesnake can be confused with an infrared show while the gopher snake cannot? The only explanation is that our Magnificent Creator God, Who made them both and calls us to saving faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, designed the ground squirrels’ unique display. |
| 11/13/2023 | If it weren’t for mushrooms, there would be so many un-decayed dead trees that there would be no room on Earth for anything else to grow. But mushrooms don’t just recycle dead trees. They help make the trees grow in the first place.The mushrooms that we see are merely the part of the fungus that produces the fruit. Most of the mushroom is unseen. If you were to peel back the bark of a decaying tree, you’ll see white tissue called mycelia. That is the main part of the mushroom plant. Many species of mushrooms combine efforts to help trees grow. Their mycelium forms a sheath around tree roots that help to deliver water and nutrients. In return, they get excess sugar produced by the tree. This relationship is so close that both the fungi and the tree depend upon each other. For example, researchers estimate that the Douglas Fir has about 1,000 species of fungus working together for its support. The fungi will even form underground mycelial networks to move nutrients between different kinds of tree.Clearly, our Magnificent Creator God has designed a finely balanced partnership between trees and fungi for their mutual survival. In the Old Testament, God punished His people through the loss of their planted crops. Is it just possible He tipped the fine balance of other such partnerships to do His bidding? |
| 11/12/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/11/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 11/9/2023 | The last few years have seen a good deal of excitement among astronomers over the possibility of discovering planets orbiting distant stars. Astronomers are looking at stars that are surrounded by disks of dust and debris.The idea is that planets form over millions of years from the dust and rock that orbits a star. This was supposedly how the Earth formed billions of years ago. Hundreds of such stars have so far been identified. Often, these debris fields extend further from the star they orbit than, say, Pluto is from our sun. The question is, are the discovery of planets and debris around other stars proof of evolution’s story of the formation of the Earth?Scientists believe that it takes two or three million years for planets to form out of the orbiting debris. However, they also recognize that it only takes a few thousand years before a star’s gravity draws the dust into itself, or the pressure of its radiation forces the dust away from itself. This leaves the hundreds of stars with dusty debris fields a mystery. Astronomers believe that all these stars still have their dust after millions or billions of years because they are getting fresh dust from somewhere else, but scientists don’t know where.Perhaps a better explanation is that these stars are only about 6,000 years old and that they were spoken into existence by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 11/8/2023 | The long, cold winters of Scandinavia not only freeze the lakes, but pile so much snow on the lake ice that no light can penetrate to the cold, unfrozen water beneath. This means that the creatures below the ice can use up all the oxygen in the lake water.As a result of the lack of oxygen, lactic acid builds up in the bodies of these creatures as they metabolize sugar to get energy. However, turtles can stand levels of lactic acid in their systems that would kill you or me, and they lower their heartbeat to 10 percent of normal. The Crucian carp, similar to a goldfish, takes a unique approach to this lack of oxygen. As the oxygen disappears, the carp slows its heartbeat. The fish then changes its entire metabolic chemistry to a process that can get energy from sugar without oxygen. This oxygen-free metabolism turns the lactic acid into ethanol, which the fish releases through its gills. The members of this carp family are the only vertebrates that can continue normal life without oxygen.That our Magnificent Creator God’s wonders seem without number and often seem impossible tells us of God’s unlimited creativity and His ability to do anything. His plan of salvation in which His Son, Jesus Christ, carried our sin on the cross makes us thankful for His creativity and wisdom. |
| 11/7/2023 | A real monster prowls the ocean floor from the Aleutian Islands to Southern California. It is a terror to even relatively large bottom dwellers. It eats many things, including hermit crabs, clams, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and even abalone. This monster goes by the seemingly innocent name of the Sunflower Star.The Sunflower Star begins life as a microscopic larva, much like other sea stars. But as it grows, it surpasses anything that other sea stars can achieve. Its five arms become more arms as it grows until it finally has 24 arms. By this time it can be 39 inches across. But its size does not limit its speed. It uses 15,000 tube feet to move over 5 feet per minute. This is possible because, like other sea stars, the Sunflower Star’s skeleton is made up of just a few pieces of skeletal mesh, making it more flexible. It is such a terror to other creatures that when they sense its approach they flee at surprising speed. Even the Northern Abalone, which normally moves sluggishly, flees in the hope that the Sunflower Star will not capture it.Just another wonder by our Magnificent Creator God who made a place in His Master Plan for every creation He brought into this world. |
| 11/6/2023 | 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! |
| 11/5/2023 | Evolutionary scientists studying the workings of the human brain are trying to find out what the human “mind” is. The problem is that everyone, including scientists, knows that human beings are conscious people with minds. Yet, strict, materialistic science says that there is no scientific evidence for the mind.Research with people who had brain injuries indicates that the brain and the mind are not the same things. The reality of the human mind seems to have no material basis. This presents a difficult problem for evolutionary scientists who have assumed that evolution, with its materialistic view of reality, is correct. According to the evolutionary view of the world, if something is not measurable by science, that thing is not real. Evolution denies that humans have any nonmaterial part.Some evolutionists have tried to resolve this problem by saying that human beings are not really conscious. They say that we don’t really have minds. We only think we do. It’s a trick played on us by our nervous systems. Entire books have been devoted to this subject. However, this approach creates a new problem. If we really don’t have minds, we cannot trust the truth of anything we might think. We can’t even trust the thought that we don’t have minds.The debate among these strict materialist scientists actually amounts to an admission that there is a greater, nonmaterial reality that cannot be measured by science. Yes, the existence of the immaterial, but undeniably real, human mind (should I say “soul”?) also testifies to our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 11/4/2023 | 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! |
| 11/3/2023 | 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”. |
| 11/2/2023 | 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! |
| 11/1/2023 | Scientists have known for some time that hummingbirds prefer bright-colored flowers. On the other hand, all of us know that white is most easily seen at night. That means that moths that pollinate flowers will more easily find white flowers. The question is: What is a flower to do when it is pollinated by hummingbirds during part of its flowering season and by night-flying moths later in its flowering season?That’s the problem faced by a flowering plant called the gilia. Hummingbirds arrive to pollinate the flowers in mid-July. However, they leave in late August as the weather cools. Also in late August, the night-flying hawk moth arrives to begin pollinating the flower. This arrangement continues until late September. To attract both hummingbirds and moths during its long flowering season, the gilia provides bright red flowers, favored by the hummingbirds, until late August. Then it offers white flowers to attract the hawk moths.Evolutionary scientists call this an example of evolutionary strategy. Think about that for a moment. How would a flower know what color it is? How would it know which colors are preferred by hummingbirds and which are preferred by moths? A flower could no more decide to change its color than you or I can decide to grow an inch taller.Both logic and science say that the gilia’s special features are intelligently designed by a truly gifted engineer. Why not, then, recognize the work of our all-wise Magnificent Creator God for what it is! |
| 10/31/2023 | Bats are among the most underappreciated creatures in the entire world. Yet, they are most worthy of our appreciation. Nearly all bats eat only insects or fruit. Only one tropical species feeds on blood – usually the blood of cattle.There are thousands of bat species. Incredibly, bats make up one-fourth of all mammal species on Earth. One-half of all mammal species found in the tropics are bats.The smallest bat in the world is the Kitti’s hog-nosed bat, which is no larger than a bumblebee and weighs less than a penny. The largest bats are fruit bats. These completely harmless bats may have a wingspan of several feet. Most bats live in colonies, and some colonies have up to 20 million members.Bats are beneficial to both humans and nature. Many of the bats found in North America, as well as other parts of the world, are responsible for consuming thousands of tons of insects every night. Other bats pollinate flowers. Bats are also an essential link in the ecosystem that makes the rainforest possible.The earliest bats found in the fossil record are like bats today. They are fully formed with fully developed wings for flight. This means that there is not one scrap of fossil evidence to support the claim that bats evolved from some other creature. We can conclude that the scientific evidence says that bats were created pretty much in their present form by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 10/30/2023 | 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. |
| 10/29/2023 | An adult human liver is about the size of a small football. It weighs about three pounds, making it the body’s largest internal organ. Tucked neatly beneath the ribs, your liver performs more than 500 different tasks. It is a vital link between your heart, lungs and digestive system.Inside the liver is a bewildering array of microscopic veins in which each drop of blood is processed. Here, blood conditions are constantly monitored to make sure that its chemistry meets strict standards. If more of some substances are needed in the blood, they are supplied. Useless chemicals are broken down into useful chemicals. Your liver makes proteins and corrects blood clotting factors. Your liver also sees to it that hormone balances are maintained and that poisons are neutralized. If substances are needed to fight an infection, your liver makes them and adds them to the bloodstream. Your liver also stores vitamins and minerals and prepares itself to provide your body with quick energy when you need it. In addition, the liver makes bile, which is essential for digestion.Structures like the liver have caused many evolutionists to abandon the idea that life is a result of millions of years of accidents. The liver is just too well-designed and integrated into the body to have been produced by purposelessness and mindlessness. As Scripture says, truly our Magnificent Creator God has formed our inward parts! |
| 10/28/2023 | 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! |
| 10/27/2023 | 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. |
| 10/26/2023 | The amazing structure of the honeycomb has fascinated scientists for thousands of years. In the third century, the astronomer and geometer Pappus of Alexandria became the first to offer an explanation for why the honeycomb has a hexagonal shape.Pappus explained that only three shapes could serve as candidates for a honeycomb cell – the triangle, the square and the hexagon. Any other shape would leave wasteful open spaces between the cells. Pappus noted that the hexagon holds more honey in the same space than either a square or a triangle. It also takes less wax to build, and the shared sides of the hexagonal cells reduce wax usage even further.It was not until the development of modern calculus that scientists could fully appreciate the shape of the caps at the end of the honeycomb cells. Each cell is capped with a pyramid composed of three rhombuses. Complex mathematics shows that this shape, too, requires the least amount of wax for construction. It also allows honeycomb cells to be butted up against each other without wasting space.Modern scientists who accept evolution talk about the design of the honeycomb as a great accomplishment by the bees. However, the more sensible conclusion is obvious. The ten-sided prism of the honeycomb cap is magnificent testimony to the mathematical wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God Himself! |
| 10/25/2023 | Even though it’s a mammal and not a fish, the Weddell seal of the Antarctic is one of the greatest deep-sea divers in the world. Weighing up to 1,200 pounds, the Weddell seal can cruise under water for up to 70 minutes. It is able to reach depths as great as 1,600 feet. For comparison, the record for a human being is a 13-minute, 43-second dive down to 282 feet.Humans are not designed to handle the pressure changes involved in diving to great depths. If humans stay too deep for too long and then return to the surface too quickly, they may die. The rapid change in pressure causes nitrogen to come out of solution in the blood. The result is a potentially fatal condition known as the “bends.”Weddell seals don’t have to worry about this because their blood doesn’t have dissolved nitrogen. Scientists are trying to learn just how the Weddell seals’ lungs prevent this. However, the unique design of the Weddell seal doesn’t stop with its lungs. The Weddell seal is able to withstand pressures up to 750 pounds per square inch. Those pressures on you or me would cause us to have epileptic seizures.What science is learning about the complex and unique designs of the Weddell seals make the evolutionary claims that these seals came from land-living mammals increasingly difficult to believe. Yet, they illustrate the great wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God! |
| 10/24/2023 | In Genesis chapter 5 we read that Adam lived to be 930 years old. One question often asked is, “Could Adam really have lived that long?”Most of the effects of aging are due to genetic mistakes that accumulate over generations. This is in addition to the age limitations God imposed on human beings after the Genesis Flood. These early generations, so close to Adam and Eve, would have accumulated comparatively few genetic mistakes.Before the Genesis Flood, the Earth was probably a very different place. Many creation-scientists believe that the pre-Flood Earth was surrounded by a canopy of water vapor or at least in some way had a greater atmospheric pressure – perhaps about twice what it is now. Medical researchers have been experimenting with the effects of higher atmospheric pressure. Tests in chambers that subject people to similar air pressures show that high atmospheric pressure gets more oxygen to the cells and speeds healing. Hospitals use a hyperbaric chamber for burn victims. Experiments have shown that such chambers can also reverse senility. And higher atmospheric pressure appears to reverse some of the effects of aging on the skin and hair and stimulates the entire body.We can be sure that Adam and the others lived as long as they did because our Magnificent Creator God’s Word says they did. However, science may be discovering some of the conditions in the pre-Flood world that may have helped make these long lives possible. |
| 10/23/2023 | Those light flashes created by fireflies are actually a quite complex language. The more than 200 species of firefly each have their own language. Each species uses a different combination of color, intensity and flash intervals.As the male firefly cruises over the firefly community, he emits an automatic series of flashes. As he “talks” with flashes of light, he is looking for the appropriate response from a female who is ready to mate. Each species has its own light language, helping males to identify members of their own species. Females who are not ready to mate or who have already mated communicate these facts to the overhead male. Evidence indicates that at least one firefly species understands and can speak “foreign” firefly language. Females of this species will lure males of other species down by using the male’s language and pretending to be a female who is ready to mate. When the male comes close for mating, the female captures and eats him.You can “speak” firefly, too, if you have a flashlight. First, you must cover the flashlight so that it emits only a tiny point of light. Then, after carefully watching the patterns of the female fireflies in the area, try to mimic that pattern. If you do this correctly, male fireflies will come to investigate your flashlight.The intelligence that fills all of creation is one of the “fingerprints” of our intelligent Magnificent Creator God. Such intelligence cannot come from accidents. |
| 10/22/2023 | 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. |
| 10/21/2023 | 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!!! |
| 10/20/2023 | 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. |
| 10/19/2023 | There is nothing our Creator God does that is not intended to bring us closer to Him. Why? Because His purpose in making humans was to make someone to love. We exist because He wanted to love us and be loved by us. There is nothing visible or invisible that is not meant to be of service to us. Consider the invisible angels who protect us. They rejoice when even one person turns to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.Consider the heavens above our heads. There, God placed billions of stars – some much larger than our sun. There are giant pinwheel galaxies with millions of huge stars. Countless billions of stars churn out more energy every second than we can ever hope to measure. What a lavish and beautiful timepiece to tell us when it is time to plant and time to harvest! God has given us more than the necessities of life. He has also hidden medicines within the bark of trees and the sweet-scented flower. He has filled that creation with splendor and beauty.However, I cannot neglect to mention His greatest and most generous gift. When we sought our will instead of His, we withdrew our love from Him. His response was to send His only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer our punishment for sin on the cross. And He rose from the dead on the third day so that we could have new life with our Creator again. Oh, that our thanksgiving to our Magnificent Creator God could be as unlimited as His generosity! |
| 10/18/2023 | The ability to smell is one gift we often take for granted. That’s probably because we usually identify things more quickly with one of our other senses. At the same time, Thanksgiving dinner wouldn’t be the same without the smells.Some of the most unlikely creatures have a sense of smell. Believe it or not, even fungi have a sense of smell. Worms have organs on their heads to sense odor. Ticks carry their scent-detecting organs on their feet; this arrangement wouldn’t work well for us! Mollusks smell through their gills! The salmon uses smell to find the same brook in which he was spawned. Lizards and snakes use their tongues to detect scents.The most skilled smellers in the animal world can detect a scent even if there is only one molecule of that scent mixed in with 10 trillion molecules of average air. The modern perfumer’s highly trained nose can identify about 10,000 different odors.Before the days of modern medicine, a doctor’s diagnosis would consist in part of sniffing the patient. For example, the plague had the scent of honey. Scarlet fever often gave its presence away by the smell of hot bread, and measles smelled like fresh-plucked feathers.It takes a keen knowledge of biochemistry to design a system that can detect and identify scents. So next time you smell a wonderful meal or a beautiful flower, you may want to thank your Creator.Ephesians 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.” |
| 10/17/2023 | Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 “To every [thing there is] a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven . . . A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”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. |
| 10/16/2023 | Gerbils are those friendly, furry little rodents that many children keep as pets. Gerbils are social animals. They value communication very highly. Researchers have found that those gerbils in a given community that can communicate most clearly have the highest social status.For a long time, researchers were confused about the sounds gerbils make because they were only hearing a small part of the communication. This is because our human ears hear sounds that go up to about 20,000 cycles per second. However, gerbils do most of their talking at as high as 32,000 cycles per second. Their talk is too high-pitched for us to hear.Tape recordings of these ultra-high-frequency sounds have been played back at slower speeds. They reveal that most gerbil communication involves different kinds of whistles. These whistles are different types of speech, depending upon the purpose of the communication. While researchers cannot completely translate gerbil speech, they have learned that gerbils are continually asking where others are and reporting their own positions.Scripture calls the Son of God “the Word.” He is presented in the Bible as the creating and saving Word. This revelation about Him is intended to help us realize that communication is an essential part of God’s nature. Communication is not an evolutionary development. How could it be? Communication is the gift of a loving Magnificent Creator God. Have you read His communication to you in the Bible? |
| 10/15/2023 | 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. |
| 10/14/2023 | 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! |
| 10/13/2023 | 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. |
| 10/12/2023 | 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 God is also our Magnificent Communicator God! |
| 10/11/2023 | 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 our Magnificent Creator 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! |
| 10/10/2023 | It occurred to scientists only about 30 years ago that insect pests might be controlled through hormones. If, for example, a hormone that prevented a destructive insect from reaching maturity was applied to a crop, the interrupted lifecycle of the insect might prevent damage to the crop. Yet, the hormone would be a safe, natural substance.However, scientists found that synthesizing such hormones was much more difficult than they thought. Several years into the research, Japanese scientists discovered that certain plants were already making these hormones for self-defense. In fact, many of the plants were manufacturing what they called “super-hormones.” “Super-hormones” are hormones that work in far lower concentrations than the juvenile hormones made by the insects themselves. These juvenile hormones prevent insects from reaching their adult, and usually most destructive, stage. Among those plants that make juvenile insect hormones are ferns and certain evergreens.One result of this research is the development of a mosquito juvenile hormone. This hormone can be time-released from briquettes in swamps, preventing mosquito wigglers from ever maturing to their flying, biting, adult stage.Again, the incredible design and balance that could only have been built into the world by our Magnificent Creator God are evident in the creation. How else could plants have gained such skill in animal chemistry? |
| 10/9/2023 | Every day, all over the Earth, plants engage in chemical warfare against insects and animals that would eat them. When this drama is described by evolutionary scientists, they usually talk about plants as though the plants were skilled chemists who developed their abilities on their own.For example, the leaves of the oak tree contain tannins. Tannins form complexes with proteins so that, when eaten, they have little nutritional value. An evolutionary account of how this arrangement came about describes how the trees supposedly developed this strategy for self-defense. Stories like this make one wonder how oak trees gained so much knowledge about animal digestion and chemistry. Some species of milkweed and dogbane produce powerful muscle relaxants that can be fatal to humans.One might picture, in the far distant past, white-smocked milkweeds working in the chemistry lab. Other “doctor” milkweeds are feeding various concoctions to humans in cages to test their responses. When one tries to account for this without a Creator, the picture can become silly.The Bible provides an answer that makes a great deal more sense. In Job 38 and 39 the Lord – the Creator – asks Job about dozens of aspects of the creation. In His questioning, He asks Job about the source of the knowledge and abilities found in living things. The answer, of course, is that our Magnificent Creator God, and no one else, designed, built and taught the creation. Other answers simply can’t satisfy. |
| 10/8/2023 | “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!!! |
| 10/7/2023 | 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!!! |
| 10/6/2023 | 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 our Magnificent Creator God’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 Jesus Christ. |
| 10/5/2023 | We have often pointed out the many plants and animals that are interrelated. Their lives depend upon one another. Very often they are interrelated in such a way that creation offers the only reasonable explanation for their special features. Evolution can call on “lucky coincidence” just so many times to explain these relationships. It makes far more sense to say that all living things were carefully planned and designed by an all-wise Master Designer.One interesting example is found in the moth family Noctuidae. This family of moths has special organs that detect the ultrasonic sounds made by the bats who eat them. A “lucky coincidence”? The problem with the evolutionary explanation is that this moth is dated by evolutionists to 75 million years ago. (Remember, these are evolutionists’ years, not real years.) This is back during the time of dinosaurs, when there weren’t supposed to be any bats. According to evolution, bats didn’t arrive on the scene until 55 million years after the Noctuidae moth. One wonders whether mindless evolution could see into the future. Or perhaps evolution was able to make moths with an ability to hear bats that would not exist for the supposed tens of millions of years! Neither explanation sounds very scientific!It makes a good deal more sense to throw out the millions of years of inflated evolutionary time. We can view the unique design of the Noctuidae moth as a sign from an all-knowing Magnificent Creator God that all living things were made by Him. Only an intelligent, personal Creator can account for the complex overall plan that we see in the created relationships between vastly different creatures. |
| 10/4/2023 | 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 God 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! |
| 10/3/2023 | 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 lies 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. Our Magnificent Creator God has devised an ingenious way to provide for the needs of many creatures. Truly, the Lord does provide all living things with their food in precisely the way they need it! |
| 10/2/2023 | 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 our Magnificent Creator 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 creation is truly a wonder! |
| 10/1/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/30/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/29/2023 | According to evolutionists, coral is one of the earlier creatures on the evolutionary time line. If evolutionary theory were fact, one would expect the corals to be very simple. One would also expect them to have changed a lot in over half a billion years of life.However, corals are not at all simple creatures. The stinger used by coral polyps to immobilize prey is very complex. It is produced by a highly specialized cell in the polyp itself. At one end of the stinging capsule is a poker, covered by a protective cap. At the other end of the capsule there is a hollow tube, coiled like a rope. The capsule itself is filled with a powerful poison.When the poker end of the capsule is touched, a number of complex things happen in a very short time. The cap springs open, the poker rips a hole in the victim and continues in, carrying with it the poison tube, which then pumps the poison into the victim. All of these amazing steps take place in less than five ten-thousandths of a second!Coral is “surprisingly” complex to be so near the bottom of the evolutionary ladder. In addition, the earliest corals in the fossil record – over half a billion years old by inflated evolutionary counting – are the same as those found today! So again, the scientific evidence fits well with the biblical story of creation by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 9/28/2023 | 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 point to a Magnificent Creator God who is both Creator and Teacher – even to insects! |
| 9/27/2023 | 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. |
| 9/26/2023 | 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 percent 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 has 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. |
| 9/25/2023 | 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. |
| 9/24/2023 | 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. |
| 9/23/2023 | 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! |
| 9/22/2023 | 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!We can rely on our Magnificent Creator God to allow for every need whether animal, plant, or human. |
| 9/21/2023 | 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.Only our Magnificent Creator God could design such a process as childbirth. |
| 9/20/2023 | 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. |
| 9/19/2023 | 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 our Magnificent Creator 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. |
| 9/18/2023 | 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. We at Creation Moments looked at the scientific basis for these claims. We wanted to know if the greenhouse warming of the Earth was a true threat or just another fear of a godless people. We 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 The Magnificent Creator God. |
| 9/17/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/16/2023 | 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 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! |
| 9/15/2023 | 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 percent of the body weight of the bird is breast muscle. By comparison, in humans, breast muscles are only about 1 percent 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 Magnificent Creator God who clearly knows everything there is to know about flight. |
| 9/14/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/13/2023 | 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, non-sticky 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. |
| 9/12/2023 | 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 relatively 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 Creator makes doing science impossible. |
| 9/11/2023 | It’s a challenge, even for the Christian, to get along with lazy, selfish people. This is because they also tend to be quarrelsome, especially when their desires are not met. Now scientists have discovered that the phrase “industrious as an ant” does not apply to all ants. They report that they have found an entire ant society that is lazy, selfish and quarrelsome.Sometimes a society is pleasant to live in and sometimes it’s not. Not all ant societies are harmonious examples of cooperation. One ant society, popularly called the slave-makers, must be a miserable place to live. Slave-making ants make their living by plundering the nests of other species and making slaves of their captives. Slave ants are forced to feed, house and even defend their masters.This leaves the slave-making ants with a great deal of idle time. Most of that idle time is spent in endless squabbles with each other over social status. The higher a slave-maker’s status, the more service from a slave she receives. It would seem that just as idle human hands can lead to strife between people, idle ants tend to fight with each other too.This universal linking of selfishness, laziness and fighting tells us that there are indeed universal moral truths. It shows us that those who say there is no absolute morality are wrong. Perhaps our Magnificent Creator God has allowed this ant society to corrupt itself so we could have a scientific basis to reject today’s moral relativism. |
| 9/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/9/2023 | 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!!! |
| 9/8/2023 | “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 its 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 for over a quarter of a century! 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! |
| 9/7/2023 | 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 decades 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. |
| 9/6/2023 | 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. |
| 9/5/2023 | 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! |
| 9/4/2023 | 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. |
| 9/3/2023 | 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. |
| 9/2/2023 | 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! |
| 9/1/2023 | Could the giant flying fox be a primate? In the 18th century, scientists weren’t quite sure what to do with bats. Some wanted to classify them as primates, while others thought they should have their own category. Since 1780, all 950 known species of bats have been classified in their own category. The bat order is divided into microbats and megabats. Microbats have an average wingspan of less than a foot. Megabats are larger. The giant flying fox has a wingspan of six feet!The evolutionary link between microbats and megabats is dissolving as scientists learn more about them. Although megabats and microbats are very clearly bats, they are constructed in importantly different ways. Microbats rely mainly on echo-location to navigate. Megabats have very large eyes, enabling them to see like owls in low light. The nerves that connect the eyes of microbats to the brain cross. As a result, the image from the right eye goes to the left brain, and the left eye feeds its image to the right brain. However, megabats are wired with both eyes feeding into both sides of the brain. This arrangement is otherwise unique to primates!If bats evolved, these new findings mean that bats must have evolved at least twice! It also means that some bats evolved from monkey-like creatures!It makes far more sense to admire our Magnificent Creator God’s unlimited creativity. We can logically reason that God gave His larger bats eyesight like that of a monkey because their needs are similar.Creation Moments |
| 8/31/2023 | 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! |
| 8/30/2023 | 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 our Magnificent Creator 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! |
| 8/29/2023 | 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. In view of this, it doesn’t seem at all scientific to say that there is no Magnificent Creator God! |
| 8/28/2023 | 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 Magnificent Creator God. |
| 8/27/2023 | 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! |
| 8/26/2023 | 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. |
| 8/25/2023 | 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. |
| 8/24/2023 | 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 a 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. |
| 8/23/2023 | 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! |
| 8/22/2023 | Have you ever wondered why it is that ducks can spend all day in near-freezing water, and it doesn’t seem to bother them? For that matter, birds never seem to be bothered about cold feet. If we ran around in the ice and snow with bare feet, it wouldn’t be very long before we had a good case of frostbite. So why don’t birds need socks?Birds have a network of arteries that take the blood down to their feet. These arteries are interwoven with the veins that return the blood from the feet. This network of arteries and veins is called a “wonder net.” The blood going down the arteries is hot at 106 degrees, but the temperature of the blood returning in the veins may be as cool as 37 degrees as it leaves the foot. The warm blood reheats the cold blood coming from the foot before it enters the body. The result is that the bird loses very little body heat, and 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? Hardly! The most reasonable conclusion is that there is a Magnificent Creator God Who cares for all His creation, including you and me! |
| 8/21/2023 | The exotic Venus flytrap is an insect-catching plant and a wonder of God’s engineering. For example, these meat-eating plants usually live in mineral-poor soils, but by catching their own lunch, they actually provide their own fertilizer.Up until now, scientists have not fully understood what causes the trap of the flytrap to close so rapidly on its victim. They knew that when an insect trips the little trigger hairs inside the trap, those hairs send an electric impulse to the cells on the outside of the trap.Now it has been learned that this impulse almost instantly causes the outer cells of the trap to secrete acid. The acid breaks down the cell walls and they expand at high speed, causing the trap to close. The more the insect fights the trap, the more tightly it closes. Six to twelve hours later, after lunch is digested, the trap receives chemical signals from inside – the carnivorous plant’s version of a burp – and opens to await the next meal.The Venus flytrap is a glowing example of what Scripture is talking about when it says that the works of the Lord are manifold – that He has made so much variety and so many ways of providing for living things. Truly, our Magnificent Creator God’s imagination and creativity are a wonder to behold! |
| 8/20/2023 | 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. |
| 8/19/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/18/2023 | The bombardier beetle has a powerful and complex system for protecting himself from enemies. Glands within the beetle produce a mixture of two hydroquinone compounds and hydrogen peroxide. These chemicals must be held in separate chambers because when they come into contact with each other, they react. When the beetle is threatened, the chemicals are mixed in a third chamber, where a third chemical is added and an explosive reaction takes place. This reaction forces the caustic solution out through a special “nozzle.” The beetle is skilled in aiming this nozzle at its enemy.If this system is missing any of its parts, it is more than worthless to the beetle; the chemicals alone are very dangerous. So this sophisticated defense system could not have evolved in stages. Imagine the poor beetle who evolved the ability to produce the chemicals but hadn’t yet evolved the right chambers to mix them without blowing itself up. The first time he became alarmed – poof! – no more beetle at all!The bombardier beetle is such a problem for evolutionists that many of them have challenged claims that an explosion takes place. The fact is, the beetle can give you a nasty burn. Even the popular magazine Science Digest explained the bombardier beetle’s defense with the words “explosive reaction.”Clearly, the bombardier beetle is excellent evidence that creatures were originally created in finished form by a wise Magnificent Creator God, without the need for stages of improvement. |
| 8/17/2023 | Perhaps to get evolutionists to rethink their beliefs, the Creator has provided many inventive and unique structures. There are so many of these that even the longest evolutionary timescale could not account for their evolution.Let’s focus on a few examples among frogs for a moment. Frogs need to keep their eggs moist. Water must be available for their tadpoles. Frogs have many different ways of doing this.The Venezuelan marsupial frog has a skin pouch, just like a kangaroo, except hers is on her back. The female marsupial frog stores her eggs in the pouch. There is plenty of moisture and protection in her pouch for the young frogs. When they are mature, the skin pouch sort of unzips, and out come up to 20 young frogs!The Brazilian tree frog uses a completely different approach. This frog actually builds a pool of mud, near a pond, in which it lays its eggs. This pool is usually built so that by the time the eggs have developed into strong tadpoles, the regular tropical rains wash the pool, along with the swimming tadpoles, into the pond!In Job 38:36, the Lord asks Job, “Who has put wisdom in the mind?” It is obvious to us that only the Lord, the Magnificent Creator God of heaven and earth, could have given frogs these abilities and this knowledge. And it is just as clear that it is nonsense to say that chance and time made these frogs and their abilities. |
| 8/16/2023 | Beavers are widely known for their huge constructions. However, beavers build more than just dams.The beaver is quite an engineer. When building a dam, a beaver first rams poles into the bed of his waterway. The poles are placed on an angle to increase holding power and are then rammed into the waterway bed, thick end first. This basic skeleton is then reinforced with twigs, leaves, mud and stone. It’s not unusual for the beaver to use forked branches to further anchor his construction to trees and boulders.One beaver dam was over 1,800 feet long, 9 feet high and 18 feet wide. It was strong enough for a horse and rider to use as a natural bridge.Large trees brought down for use in construction are not dragged by the beavers to their project. Instead, beavers dig overland channels and float the trees to the main body of water where they are working. These channels can be 1,000 feet long.Our wise Magnificent Creator God gave so much intelligence and wisdom to the animal kingdom that often we can learn some things from the animals. Rather than supporting the idea of evolution, with its claim that there is progressively greater intelligence in higher creatures, the beaver supports the idea that the Creator is the source of all intelligence. |
| 8/15/2023 | Imagine a beetle that can move across the surface of water without any body movement. Some creatures have been given such ability and skill that it should be clear to even the most skeptical person that their Maker and Teacher is greater than any human being.One such creature is the large-eyed rove beetle. Like many other insects, this beetle can walk on water. The surface tension of the water is enough to support the beetle on top of the water, given the special structure of his legs and feet. Should you see the large-eyed rove beetle, you will notice that he moves across the water, stops, turns, and starts up again without moving any part of his body. How does this work?The large-eyed rove beetle has special glands that produce a chemical – something like detergent – that changes the surface tension of the water. When the surface tension of the water near his back feet is different from the surface tension of the water near his front feet, the beetle is pulled forward.Such a unique method of movement requires sophisticated knowledge of both hydrodynamics and chemistry. Since the beetle is obviously not that smart, it is no wonder that evolutionists often speak of evolution as though it were intelligent and able to create such wonders. However, it makes a lot more sense to talk about a wise, personal Magnificent Creator God than it does to speak of the wisdom of a mindless force like evolution. |
| 8/14/2023 | Intelligence – as much as is needed and no more – is generously found throughout the creation. So we cannot say that intelligence alone makes humans special.Consider the weaverbird. The weaverbird nest consists of woven strips of fiber and grass. Using beak and feet, the male weaverbird uses both loops and knots to weave his hanging nest. Then the nest must be inspected by a prospective mate. If she doesn’t like the nest’s construction, she will turn down the hopeful mate. The male must then tear down his work and start over. Some males have been observed constructing and tearing down their nests two dozen times before finding a prospective mate who is satisfied with his work. Some weaverbirds actually build huge cities of nests protected by a woven roof. One roof over a weaverbird city was 15 feet across!Human intelligence spans much more than animal intelligence. However, what sets us apart from animals is the fact that our Magnificent Creator God made us to have a special relationship with Him. And even when Adam and Eve placed their will above God’s Word, He still loved us enough to pay the highest price to restore us to Himself. Jesus Christ lived in perfect obedience to God for us and then suffered the penalty of our disobedience against God. In His resurrection from the dead, all those who embrace Christ in faith receive the promise of being made new creations again – beginning right here in this life! That’s the wide gulf between humans and animals! |
| 8/13/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/12/2023 | 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. |
| 8/11/2023 | “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!!! |
| 8/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/9/2023 | 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. |
| 8/8/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/7/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/6/2023 | 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!!! |
| 8/5/2023 | 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. |
| 8/4/2023 | 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. |
| 8/3/2023 | 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 reported in Genesis by our Magnificent Creator God. |
| 8/2/2023 | 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 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. |
| 8/1/2023 | 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 a sign of our Magnificent Creator God’s wisdom. This fact also tells us that living things are not related to each other by evolution. |
| 7/31/2023 | Researchers are learning that bacteria have senses similar to our hearing and sight. Bacteria even have a brain that receives information from their senses. They can make decisions. However, all of this is not enough to explain how bacteria can make the decision to swim toward food.When you want a candy bar, you know where to find one, even if you must go to the nearest store. You might also hope that your dentist doesn’t see you buying candy. All of this involves memory, which has long been considered a basic part of the mind.Researchers, using various solutions of substances that attract or repel bacteria, have now learned that bacteria do indeed have both long-term and short-term memories. They remember where goodies are to be found. Once a bacterium develops a strategy for dealing with the unknown, it will remember what to do next time.This finding shocked researchers. They know that when you or I decide to retreat or advance, at least hundreds and probably thousands of brain cells are involved. The one-celled bacteria can make the same decision based on past memories. Are there really “simple” forms of life that serve as the living traces of evolutionary development? Scientists haven’t found any yet. According to the Bible’s account of creation by our Magnificent Creator God, we don’t expect them to find any simple forms of life from which we can be traced. |
| 7/30/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/29/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/28/2023 | 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.Our Magnificent Creator 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. |
| 7/27/2023 | 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! |
| 7/26/2023 | When lost in the forest with no clues to where to go, humans tend to go in circles. And we have brains. Amoebas, which don’t have brains, somehow manage not to end up going in circles when they have no clues where to go.Normally, amoebas look for food by picking up its scent. When amoebas detect something good to eat, they move in its direction by extending parts of its body called pseudopods. However, when there are no scents to follow, many single-celled creatures tend to wander aimlessly. This turns out to be a very inefficient strategy for finding food. That’s because, just like humans, they end up wandering in circles. But after careful study, researchers from Princeton University have concluded that amoebas somehow manage to avoid this problem. Somehow, though they have no brain, they appear to remember where they have been. They suggest that forming pseudopods causes a type of temporary scarring on its cell wall which serves as a type of memory.While amoebas are just looking for food, we ultimately seek an eternity with our Creator. Many people do not know of, or do not believe our Magnificent Creator God’s Word and end up with lives that wander in spiritual circles. But God’s Word brings heaven’s light into our lives which lights the way to heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ. |
| 7/25/2023 | 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. |
| 7/24/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/23/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/22/2023 | “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 2:19It 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. |
| 7/21/2023 | 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! |
| 7/20/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/19/2023 | There are five known groups of orchids that throw their pollen. These flowers are designed with mechanical flower structures that work as triggers. Some types use a bee’s back to trigger the pollen discharge. Another uses, yes, the bee’s knees.The Catasetum orchid produces a few male flowers that have a strong scent that attracts a male bee. When the bee lands and trips the pollen trigger, it is showered with that flower’s entire hope for the next generation. Then the flower stops producing any scent and begins to wither and die. Now it’s up to the bee to find a female flower for the pollen.It’s not easy for the bee to find a female flower because the Catasetum orchid produces even fewer females than males. But the female flower has an even stronger scent than the male, and it lives longer. If the bee finds a female flower, the future of this orchid is bright because the fruit that results produces three million seeds! That’s as if nearly half the population of New York City had the same mother and father!Because the designs of the Creator are carried out amid such beauty and with such careful planning, evolutionists often talk about evolution as if it were a living being. However, the truth is clear. Our Magnificent Creator God is not merely a distant God up in His heaven. Think of it for a moment. If He is so concerned about such detail even among plants and insects, how much more concerned is He about the details of our lives! |
| 7/18/2023 | 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 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! |
| 7/17/2023 | Hydraulic machines are part of our everyday lives. When you step on the brakes in your car, brake fluid, which cannot be compressed, is forced from a cylinder into the braking mechanism attached to your wheels. Hydraulic mechanisms work because fluid cannot expand, but it will easily flow to areas where there is less pressure.However, humans were not the first to invent uses for this principle. The spider uses it all the time. The spider has his skeleton on the outside of his body and his muscles inside his skeleton. Since our muscles are outside our skeleton, we can use muscles both to bend our legs and stretch them out. However, the spider’s arrangement allows his muscles only to bend his leg. When he wants to straighten out his leg to take another spidery step, he pumps fluid into his leg, and the leg joint hinges open.The North American dwarf mistletoe builds up hydraulic pressure equal to that found in a truck tire. It uses that stored pressure to catapult its seeds up to 50 feet at a speed close to 60 miles per hour. The squirting cucumber, found in the Mediterranean area, uses the same principle to propel its seeds up to 40 feet.Who would believe that the brake system in an automobile came together by chance and natural forces? Neither does it make sense to believe that spiders, other animals and plants came about without a Designer and Magnificent Creator God. |
| 7/16/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/15/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/14/2023 | 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. |
| 7/13/2023 | It sounds silly to ask whether bacteria can think. However, science has known for more than 100 years that the little guys can indeed think. Experiments in 1883 conducted by Wilhelm Pfeffer showed that bacteria will swim toward good food like chicken soup and away from poisons such as mop disinfectant.Pfeffer also learned that bacteria can make decisions. He made sure that his bacteria knew the location of chicken soup. Then he separated them from it with a mild mixture of disinfectant. He found that the little fellows would swim as fast as they could through the disinfectant to get to the soup.This is the same type of decision-making process you and I go through every day. We often tolerate the unpleasant to arrive at the pleasant. As a result of this research, scientists today talk about bacteria actually making decisions.These conclusions amaze most people. That’s because we have been trained to think of intelligence in an evolutionary context. The “higher” or more evolved a creature is, the smarter we expect it to be. However, if we recognize, as the Bible says, that all life is the product of an intelligent Creator, we should not be surprised to find that intelligence has nothing to do with evolution. Every creature has been given as much intelligence as it needs by our Magnificent Creator God Who truly cares for every living creature – even bacteria! |
| 7/12/2023 | 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. |
| 7/11/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/9/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/8/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/7/2023 | Some creatures are so bizarre that they suggest a lesson to us. Yet even in their strangeness we see that they have been perfectly provided for by their Creator.One such example is the three-toed sloth. It rarely moves, spending about 18 hours a day sleeping upside down in a tree. When it does bother to move, it is in ultra-slow motion. It is not unusual for the three-toed sloth to take 30 seconds to shift one leg a few inches.The three-toed sloth doesn’t do well on the ground because he can’t walk or even crawl. If a sloth is placed on the ground it v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y pulls itself along on its belly to a tree. However, sloths hang effortlessly in the trees even when asleep. Their grasp of the tree is so solid that they continue to hang in the trees even after they have died.Even though sloths are hunted for food by the South American Indians, the three-toed sloth is the most abundant tree-dwelling mammal in South America’s forests. Despite the seeming helplessness of the three-toed sloth, it is doing well because it has been perfectly designed for its life. Because its life doesn’t seem to amount to much, it was named after one of the so-called seven deadly sins. This creature, that has a face only a mother could love, presents an image with which neither child nor adult would want to be associated. Yet the sloth still has God’s care. The nearly helpless condition of the sloth reminds us that we are completely helpless when it comes to our relationship with our Magnificent Creator God. Only because of the efforts of our Savior, Jesus Christ, do we have peace with God. Let’s not be slothful about telling others of the forgiveness of sins! |
| 7/6/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/5/2023 | 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! |
| 7/4/2023 | 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! |
| 7/3/2023 | 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 enter 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. Every one of these relationships speaks for a Magnificent Creator God and against the idea that either these creatures, or their cooperation, evolved naturally. Evolutionists have written whole books on the subject. Yet they don’t seem satisfied that they have explained how these relationships could develop through evolution. We agree that they have no explanation. Nor are they likely to find one as long as they deny a Creator who cares for His creation. |
| 7/2/2023 | 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!!! |
| 7/1/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/30/2023 | 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! |
| 6/29/2023 | Our Creator’s work reflects some of His incredible inventive creativity. In Matthew 6:30 Jesus reminds us how God provides for all the needs of all His creatures. Each creature is perfectly suited for its life, even if that requires special creativity from God.Many of the creatures that live in the deepest and darkest parts of the sea are equipped with lights. One has a very bright headlamp to light its way. Others have lights on their tails, jaws or sides. The light they produce, as the light produced by the firefly, is a cold light. The light is generated when chemicals manufactured by the creatures are mixed together.Or consider the small bird that has an “engine” powerful enough to allow it to fly for 10,000 or more miles. The construction of the bird’s heart differs from yours and mine in important ways. However, we couldn’t get by with the bird’s heart just as it couldn’t get by with ours.While it seems strange to think of the penguin as a bird that flies under water, that’s exactly what it does. The penguin can reach speeds of 30 miles per hour underwater, as fast as the fastest marine mammal, the dolphin.All of us would benefit from looking at the creatures around us a little more closely. If we do, we will learn a little more about our Magnificent Creator God. As we learn about their lives and how they are provided for, we will, as one early scientist put it, learn to think God’s thoughts about the natural world after Him! |
| 6/28/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/27/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/26/2023 | Many Christians are willing to accept what Genesis has to say about creation with one exception. They don’t want to accept the six days as literal, natural, approximately 24-hour days. Did you know that there are other important portions of Scripture that depend on those six days being literal and normal days?In Exodus 20:11 the Lord is giving the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Lord is explaining the principle of the Sabbath in this verse. God’s explanation says that man shall work six days and rest on the seventh because God Himself made the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Therefore He blessed the seventh day. This truth is repeated in Deuteronomy 5:13.Surely no Christian would argue that the Ten Commandments are poetry to be taken figuratively. The Lord is confirming here that His work of creation really occupied six normal days and that He rested on the seventh normal day. If these days were actually long ages, then we should work for six long ages before we take some rest. We can be sure that this is not what the Lord has in mind.If the Ten Commandments should not be interpreted literally because of this connection with creation, where does that leave us? Surely the creation days, by our Magnificent Creator God’s own confirmation and commandment to us, are literal, natural, approximately 24-hour days! |
| 6/25/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/24/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/23/2023 | “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 2:19It 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. |
| 6/22/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/21/2023 | Nearly 50% of the people in the United States, including many Christians, believe that God did indeed create all things. Unfortunately, they believe He used evolution as His instrument of creation.Christians often adopt this idea because they are unaware that there are thousands of scientists who believe God created the entire universe supernaturally in six days. Many are unaware that good scientific reasons exist to accept God’s work of creating just as it is described in the Bible. While it doesn’t get much media attention, the work being done by these creation scientists is challenging evolutionism. The work of creationists has appeared in scientific journals. Scientists who believe the truth of the Bible’s account of creation are involved in the professional scientific dialogue that continually goes on among science professionals.At seminars conducted by these scientists, I have heard smiling, joyful people telling everyone they saw, “I didn’t know that the Bible offered an intelligent alternative to evolution. I didn’t know there were so many well-educated scientists who were creationists! What I have heard today shows me that I can be a more faithful follower of my Lord Jesus Christ and give up belief in evolution!”There are no ‘facts” that demand that an educated person accept evolution as fact. The testimony of thousands of believing scientists confirms this. The instrument of our Magnificent Creator God’s creation was not natural law, but His Son, who took our form upon Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ for our salvation! |
| 6/20/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/19/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/18/2023 | 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. |
| 6/17/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/16/2023 | 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! |
| 6/15/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/14/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/13/2023 | 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. |
| 6/12/2023 | 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! |
| 6/11/2023 | 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. |
| 6/10/2023 | 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. |
| 6/9/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/8/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/7/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/6/2023 | 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! |
| 6/5/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/4/2023 | 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. |
| 6/3/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/2/2023 | 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!!! |
| 6/1/2023 | 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. |
| 5/31/2023 | 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! |
| 5/30/2023 | 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. |
| 5/29/2023 | 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!! |
| 5/28/2023 | 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! |
| 5/27/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/26/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/25/2023 | 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. |
| 5/24/2023 | 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. |
| 5/23/2023 | 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! |
| 5/22/2023 | 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! |
| 5/21/2023 | 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. |
| 5/20/2023 | “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. |
| 5/19/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/18/2023 | 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. |
| 5/17/2023 | 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! |
| 5/16/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/15/2023 | 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. |
| 5/14/2023 | 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. |
| 5/13/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/12/2023 | “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!!! |
| 5/11/2023 | 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. |
| 5/10/2023 | 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. |
| 5/9/2023 | 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! |
| 5/8/2023 | 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. |
| 5/7/2023 | 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! |
| 5/6/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/5/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/4/2023 | 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!!! |
| 5/3/2023 | 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. |
| 5/2/2023 | 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. |
| 5/1/2023 | 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. |
| 4/30/2023 | 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!!! |
| 4/29/2023 | 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!!! |
| 4/28/2023 | 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!!! |
| 4/27/2023 | 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. |
| 4/26/2023 | 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. |
| 4/25/2023 | 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. |
| 4/24/2023 | 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. |
| 4/23/2023 | 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! |
| 4/22/2023 | 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!!! |
| 4/21/2023 | 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! |
| 4/20/2023 | 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. |
| 4/19/2023 | 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. |
| 4/18/2023 | 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. |
| 4/17/2023 | 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. |
| 4/16/2023 | 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. |
| 4/15/2023 | 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! |
| 4/14/2023 | 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! |
| 4/13/2023 | 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. |
| 4/12/2023 | 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! |
| 4/11/2023 | 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!!! |
| 4/10/2023 | 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! |
| 4/9/2023 | 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! |
| 4/8/2023 | 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! |
| 4/7/2023 | 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! |
| 4/6/2023 | 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. |
| 4/5/2023 | 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. |
| 4/4/2023 | 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! |
| 4/3/2023 | 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! |
| 4/2/2023 | 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. |
| 4/1/2023 | 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. |
| 3/31/2023 | 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. |
| 3/30/2023 | 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! |
| 3/29/2023 | 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. |
| 3/28/2023 | 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. |
| 3/27/2023 | 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. |
| 3/26/2023 | 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. |
| 3/25/2023 | “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!!! |
| 3/24/2023 | 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! |
| 3/23/2023 | 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. |
| 3/22/2023 | 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. |
| 3/21/2023 | 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. |
| 3/20/2023 | 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. |
| 3/19/2023 | 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. |
| 3/18/2023 | 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!!! |
| 3/17/2023 | 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. |
| 3/16/2023 | 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! |
| 3/15/2023 | 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! |
| 3/14/2023 | 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. |
| 3/13/2023 | 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. |
| 3/12/2023 | 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. |
| 3/11/2023 | 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! |
| 3/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 3/9/2023 | 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!!! |
| 3/8/2023 | 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. |
| 3/7/2023 | 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! |
| 3/6/2023 | 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! |
| 3/5/2023 | 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. |
| 3/4/2023 | 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!!! |
| 3/3/2023 | 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!!! |
| 3/2/2023 | 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! |
| 3/1/2023 | 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. |
| 2/28/2023 | 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! |
| 2/27/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/26/2023 | 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. |
| 2/25/2023 | 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. |
| 2/24/2023 | 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. |
| 2/23/2023 | 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! |
| 2/22/2023 | 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? |
| 2/21/2023 | 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? |
| 2/20/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/19/2023 | 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. |
| 2/18/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/17/2023 | 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. |
| 2/16/2023 | 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. |
| 2/15/2023 | 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. |
| 2/14/2023 | 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. |
| 2/13/2023 | 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. |
| 2/12/2023 | 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! |
| 2/11/2023 | 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! |
| 2/10/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/9/2023 | 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. |
| 2/8/2023 | 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. |
| 2/7/2023 | 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. |
| 2/6/2023 | 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. |
| 2/5/2023 | 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. |
| 2/4/2023 | 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. |
| 2/3/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/2/2023 | 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!!! |
| 2/1/2023 | “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!!! |
| 1/31/2023 | 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. |
| 1/30/2023 | 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. |
| 1/29/2023 | 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! |
| 1/28/2023 | 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!!! |
| 1/27/2023 | 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. |
| 1/26/2023 | 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. |
| 1/25/2023 | 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”! |
| 1/24/2023 | 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. |
| 1/23/2023 | 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! |
| 1/22/2023 | 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!!! |
| 1/21/2023 | “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. |
| 1/20/2023 | 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! |
| 1/19/2023 | 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. |
| 1/18/2023 | 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!!! |
| 1/17/2023 | 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. |
| 1/16/2023 | 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. |
| 1/15/2023 | 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. |
| 1/14/2023 | 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. |
| 1/13/2023 | 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! |
| 1/12/2023 | 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. |
| 1/11/2023 | 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. |
| 1/10/2023 | 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! |
| 1/9/2023 | 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? |
| 1/8/2023 | 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! |
| 1/7/2023 | 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! |
| 1/6/2023 | 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! |
| 1/5/2023 | 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”. |
| 1/4/2023 | 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. |
| 1/3/2023 | 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… |
| 1/2/2023 | 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!!! |
| 1/1/2023 | 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!!! |