Dig Deeper: March 2017

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Puritan Corner - Look to your Steps

"Oh, Christians, look to your steps! When you have prayed against sin, then watch against temptation."
by Thomas Watson (1620-1686)
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:
Matthew 26:41

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 1

Gods Purpose for His Church

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ayxGivWHXhk?list=PL4ByrircmXL5Jwtb3O68grD2OEFRUo-L3

The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men. *It was organized for service, *and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.

The church is God's fortress. His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. From the beginning, faithful souls have constituted the church on earth. In every age the Lord has had His watchmen.

During ages of spiritual darkness the church of God has been as a city set on a hill. From age to age, through successive generations, the pure doctrines of heaven have been unfolding within its borders.... the church is the one object upon which God bestows in a special sense His supreme regard. It is the theater of His grace, in which He delights to reveal His power to transform hearts.

Of Israel God declared: I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me? Jeremiah 2:21
The salvation of God must be made known in the cities of the wilderness; and the disciples were called to do the work that the Jewish leaders had failed to do.

Elohim (Plural Noun)

"....the names for God found in Genesis and elsewhere tells us volumes about our Creator. “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). The Hebrew word here for God is Elohim. It is a plural noun that is used more than 2,700 times in the Old Testament. This means that inspired authors preferred to use Elohim about 10 times more than the singular form “El” when

they described God.
Paul frequently referred to the three separate persons of the Godhead. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all” 2 Corinthians 13:14.
Most of the confusion regarding the number of beings composing the Godhead springs from a simple misunderstanding of the word ‘one.’ Simply put, ‘one’ in the Bible does not always mean numerical quantity. Depending on the Scripture, ‘one’ can often mean unity.
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John 5:7). BibleUniverse

The Unlearned Man & the EndTimes

"In the great closing work we shall meet with perplexities that we know not how to deal with, but let us not forget that the three great powers of heaven are working, that a divine hand is on the wheel, and that God will bring His purposes to pass.

The time will come when we shall be brought before councils and before thousands for His name's sake, and each one will have to give the reason of his faith.

Every position of truth taken by our people will bear the criticism

of the greatest minds; the highest of the world's great men will be brought in contact with truth, and therefore every position we take should be critically examined and tested by the Scriptures. Now we seem to be unnoticed, but this will not always be. Movements are at work to bring us to the front, and if our theories of truth can be picked to pieces by historians or the world's greatest men, it will be done.

The Lord Jesus will give the disciples a tongue and wisdom that their adversaries can neither gainsay nor resist.
Words will come from the lips of the unlearned with such convincing power and wisdom that conversions will be made to the truth. Thousands will be converted under their testimony.
Why should the illiterate man have this power, which the learned man has not?
*The illiterate one, through faith in Christ, has come into the atmosphere of pure, clear truth,
*while the learned man has turned away from the truth."
Maranatha p.253 E.G.W.

But God hath chosen the foolish things
of the world to confound the wise;

and God hath chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

1 Corinthians 1:27

Where Are the Nine?

And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? Luke 17:17

"Ten lepers, hopeless and incurable, had come to Jesus, begging for His help, and He had miraculously healed them. All ten should have fallen down to worship and thank Him, but only one praised God and thanked Jesus for His marvelous deliverance, while the others rushed away.

We are at first amazed at such ingratitude, until we realize that not more than 10 percent of even those people who know about Christ ever stop to give Him thanks for His innumerable blessings--life, freedom, food, shelter, health, family, and especially easy access to the Bible and His gracious offer of salvation--far greater in value than the gift of special healing received by the ten lepers.
The thankful leper received a much greater gift than all the others. "Thy faith hath made thee whole" (Luke 17:19). They had received an outward cleansing of the body, he an inward cleansing of the soul! These words spoken by Christ are found four other times in the New Testament (Matthew 9:22; Mark 5:34; 10:52; Luke 8:48), plus two other times where the word for "made whole" is translated "saved" (Luke 7:50; 18:42). This word (Greek sozo) occurs many other times. For example: "He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him" (Hebrews 7:25)
Ten lepers were healed, but only one was saved, and the proof of his salvation, received through genuine faith in Christ, was his gratitude, giving glory to God. The primary evidence of being "filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18) is that the one so controlled by God's regenerating Spirit will be "giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:20). Those who are not thankful to their saving Lord are the 90 percent who have not been made whole." HMM

Bible Earthquake Series: Intro

"Recently, geologists have investigated the 4,000-year chronology of earthquake disturbances within

the uppermost 19 feet of laminated sediment of the Dead Sea. Hypersaline waters preserve seasonally laminated sediment because organisms cannot live or burrow in the bed of the lake.

As a result, only a nearby earthquake (or very large distant earthquake) can homogenize the lake’s uppermost sediment layers, producing a “mixed layer” devoid of laminations. A sketch of a sediment core from the west side of the Dead Sea appears in Figure 1. The sketch shows the depth of the “mixed layers” within the laminated sediment sequence.Two deeper mixed layers in the Dead Sea are datable from historical, archaeological, and geological associations with faulting—the earthquakes of 31 B.C. (the Qumran earthquake) and 750 B.C. (Amos’ earthquake).
Other earthquakes are represented in the Dead Sea sediment core with dates approximated by assuming a steady rate of sedimentation.

Consider the most important earthquakes that relate to the Bible. The earthquakes are listed in chronological order." ICR

The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa,

which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah,

and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel,

two years before the earthquake.

Amos 1:1

Naaman's Lesson in Childlike Faith

Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
2 Kings 5:14

"The familiar story of Naaman the Syrian was cited by the Lord Jesus as an example of God’s concern for people of all nations: “Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus [Elisha] the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27). It is also a

striking picture of salvation.

Naaman was a great and highly acclaimed general but nevertheless was stricken with an incurable and loathsome disease. Similarly, any natural man, no matter how powerful, is afflicted with the lethal disease of sin.

Before this proud official could be cured of his leprosy, he had to humble himself in several ways. First, he had to accept the advice of a slave girl from an enemy nation; then journey to that nation and its prophet, whose God his own nation had repudiated; travel still farther at the word of the prophet (who would not even come out to meet him); and, finally, immerse himself seven times in the despised river Jordan. Though he resented being so humiliated, his condition was hopeless otherwise, so he finally did all these things, and God marvelously healed him.

The leprous flesh became as the flesh of a little child again, but first he had to manifest the obedient faith of a little child. The same principle is true for every lost sinner. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (James 4:10). Jesus said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3-4). HMM

Creation Moment 3/31/2017 - Titan's Methane

"Researchers recently puzzled over the methane atmosphere

around Saturn’s big moon Titan. They wrote, “A question that remains unanswered is, where is all the methane coming from?” Radiation from the sun permanently converts the methane into larger molecules, mostly ethane. The ethane should have fallen to the surface for millions of years, forming hydrocarbon oceans. But “that turned out to be wrong as well,” they wrote. Titan’s youthful atmosphere still has plenty of methane." ICR

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made;

and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Psalm 33:6

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

"Lunar Sabbath" Heresy

Another False Doctrine floating around out there....

"The "Lunar Sabbath" is a fringe Christian belief that the Sabbath day is not fixed at the 7th day of the week but is dependent on the phase of the moon, Since seven does not divide evenly into the 29.5 day lunar cycle, it requires some days of the month not to be counted. Yet if an interpretation of the

Bible requires you to change how you count to seven in order to fit Scripture, could it really be what God meant?

If you are a Sabbath keeper, you may one day encounter the "Lunar Sabbath" doctrine.
This theory says that the fixed traditionally Jewish timing for keeping Sabbath of Friday sunset through Saturday sunset is a corruption of an "original" Biblically instructed reckoning of Sabbath based on the lunar cycle.

Under (one version) of this model, the Sabbath falls on the 8th, 15th, 22st and 29th day of each lunar month, or at the first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and new moon. The claim is made that God intended that one can just look up in the sky and know when the Sabbath is.

Let's review the biblical instruction for reckoning the Sabbath:

Exodus 20:9–11—9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 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.

At first glance, the Lunar Sabbaths on the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th, spaced 7 days apart, resemble the biblically prescribed seven day Sabbath cycle. However, this resemblance ends once you pass a month boundary. Instead of there being the required six intervening work days between one Sabbath and next, you instead have alternately seven or eight days between the last Sabbath of the month on the 29th and the first Sabbath of the next month on the 8th. This is due to the fact that the lunar cycle averages 29.5 days, instead of the needed 28 days to make this idea work.

This should be a fairly obvious death knell to the Lunar Sabbath theory. You may wonder how anyone could answer this clear mathematical impasse? Proponents sidestep it by claiming that those one or two extra days at the end of the month while the moon is dark do not count because hidden days are "void" days. In other words, the seven or eight days interval between Sabbaths at month boundaries are equated with the required six day interval. If this sounds irrational to you then you are not alone.

When a doctrine is in conflict with pretty clear and explicit Scripture, it should be rejected, without fear. When this theory is so easily proven false mathematically just by following it across the

month boundary, then it must be rejected. It is not necessary to hear any more of the mountains of support usually presented for the theory. The God of the Bible does not expect us to use irrational logic to interpret his words.

If a teaching requires you suspend good common sense, such as how to count properly, then do not accept it no matter how much "supernatural" or even scriptural confirmation you believe you have received. You can support anything from the Bible to fool people who have not yet acquired well-developed discernment and critical thinking skills (skills that are not stressed in our education systems which reward you mainly for accepting and regurgitating what your teachers tell you)." Tim McHyde

On the Streets of Babylon: "Lowe" Level Reached

Babylon is fallen, is fallen,..
Come out of her, my people,

Revelation 14:8/18:4

There seems to be a "Lowe Level" reached on the Streets of Babylon......

"Tamara Lowe is a false teacher. She teaches a false gospel–the Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospels as well as a heresy called Positive Confession. Positive Confession is the practice of

speaking things into existence or using the power of your words to create and manifest your desires. Lowe is on the Elijah List, a forum for New Apostolic Reformation false prophets to proclaim what “God has told them.” Lowe prophesied the following:

GOD HAS GIVEN ME THE POWER TO CREATE WEALTH! I say that unapologetically. “Wealth” is not a four-letter word. In fact, at the risk of offending you, I’ll go so far as to say if you’re struggling financially something is very, very wrong!

Her teachings and false prophecy are diametrically opposed to the Word of God,...Scripture repeatedly asserts that often times the believer’s temporal life will be replete with suffering and calamity for the cause of Christ (Phillippians 1:29, 1 Peter 4:1, Acts 14:22, etc.). Further, the Scriptures teach us to lay up for ourselves treasures in Heaven rather than useless treasures in this life–they won’t last (Matthew 6:19-21).
Lowe has proclaimed several Health and Wealth “prophecies” which are archived on the Elijah List website.
Tamara Lowe is a false teacher who seeks only to promote herself. She proudly claims that she preaches a “non-religious” gospel, which is evident by her associations with many other false teachers and her ecumenical alliances. You can regularly find her on heretical outlets such as TBN, CBN and Charisma Mag ...Regardless of where you find her, she will be surely accompanied by multiple ads and promotions asking you to sign up for her services while using the name of God, Scripture, and religious and secular celebrities to promote her false teachings." Pulpit&Pen

Papal Notes - Pope Sheikh?

..and all the world wondered after the beast.
Revelation 13:3

"Pope Francis met with various political and religious representatives from Iraq. There were Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans.

Pope Francis told them that this visit is a gesture of brotherhood. The differences, he pointed out with an example, should not be an obstacle to peace.

When the pope finished, he greeted them one by one. He gave and received many signs of affection, like this Koran or this garment usually worn by sheikhs.

"This is a symbol... given to the sheikhs. So they call you Pope Sheikh.""Did you just give me an upgrade?"

They also gave him this sign in recognition of the work of Christians for those displaced and for refugees.

Several of them also invited Pope Francis to visit Iraq. Among them was this representative of the government of Kurdistan." RomeReports

CHRIST's OBJECT LESSONS: Audio & Pull Quotes SERIES PAGE

All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables;
and without a parable spake he not unto them:
Matthew 13:34

"What shall I do to be saved?"--this is the want of the soul. The sanctification of the soul by the working of the Holy Spirit is the implanting of Christ's nature in humanity. A profession of faith and the possession of truth in the soul are two different things. The heart must be converted and sanctified.

Creation Moment 3/30/2017 - Grass "Mute"

Grass Have switches....wouldn't a switch, that controls something so important, that if it didn't exist, life wouldn't exist---be evidence of organized DESIGN? {DESIGN = DESIGNER}

And the earth brought forth grass, ... and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:12

"Grasses have top-notch border control to conserve water in their leaves. Now, scientists have identified the genetic switch that makes them such masters at taking in carbon dioxide without losing water.

Adjustable pores called stomata on the undersides of leaves help plants take in CO₂ while minimizing water loss. Like pupils responding to sunlight, plants open and close their stomata in response to changing light, humidity and temperature. Grass stomata can open wider and respond more quickly than those in other plants, which helps grasses photosynthesize more efficiently.

This ability might help explain why grasses grow successfully in so many places on Earth, says Brent

Helliker, a plant ecologist... For instance, grasses are particularly well equipped to deal with the rapidly changing weather and strong winds that can hit plains and prairies.
In most plant stomata, two kidney bean–shaped cells, one on each side of the pore, swell or deflate like balloons to control the size of the opening. But in grass, each of these cells is shaped like a dumbbell instead. And each dumbbell is linked to two other cells called subsidiary cells.
TEAMWORK A grass stoma has two dumbbell-shaped “guard cells” that inflate and deflate to close and open the pore. Neighboring subsidiary cells give a helping hand.

Scientists have long suspected that grasses’ subsidiary cells might give the dumbbells, known as guard cells, an assist by making it easier for them to open and close. But that’s been hard to test in a controlled way.

When a stoma opens, “it’s elbowing its way into the neighbor cells,” says study coauthor Dominique Bergmann, a biologist.... “If the neighbors don’t want to move, you’re stuck.” But subsidiary cells have some squish. As guard cells inflate, their neighboring subsidiary cells deflate.

Bergmann and her colleagues mutated a gene called MUTE in purple false brome (Brachypodium distachyon) so that the grass didn’t make the MUTE protein. Without MUTE, plants didn’t make subsidiary cells. And without the helping hand, the plants were less efficient than usual at opening and closing their stomata.

Grasses aren’t the only plants that have the MUTE gene, Bergmann says. But in other plants, the gene provides instructions to help make guard cells, not subsidiary cells." LiveScience

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

CHRIST's OBJECT LESSONS: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 29

To Meet the Bridegroom

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/X6UAzYEO9DE?list=PL4ByrircmXL5UosnbsJhG1f_BnZUXmR6P

The two classes of watchers represent the two classes who profess to be waiting for their Lord. They are called virgins because they profess a pure faith. The class represented by the foolish virgins are not hypocrites...but they have not yielded themselves to the Holy Spirit's working. The ten virgins are watching in the evening of this earth's history. All claim to be Christians. All apparently wait for Christ's appearing. But five are unready.

Without the Spirit of God .... The theory of truth, unaccompanied by the Holy Spirit, cannot quicken the soul or sanctify the heart.

Those who wait for the Bridegroom's coming are to say to the people, Behold your God. Isaiah 40:9

Astrological Observation Tower

"Noah and his family disembarked from the Ark and offered a sacrifice to God in thankfulness for

their great deliverance. God responded by giving them the rainbow as the sign of His promise to never again judge the earth with a similar flood. The promise came with the command to fill the earth, certainly through worldwide migration.

It wasn’t long before mankind was again in full rebellion against Him. Under the leadership of wicked Nimrod, they built an astrological observation tower at Babel from which to worship the creation rather than the Creator.

At that time, all people spoke the same language, and working together, the rebellion-minded members built the tower in open disobedience to God’s migration command, boldly defying Him with the assertion “lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4). Most of the family groups had probably remained together while rapidly multiplying. God could not leave this dual-pronged rebellion unpunished. He confused their language, halted the cooperative rebellious building project, and enforced migration.

The strongest, most prominent groups, including the forerunners of the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, and the Assyrians, probably remained where they were, forcing the others to leave.

They retained technology that they had previously acquired and founded advanced city states, while other powerful groups claimed the fertile territory nearby—areas with desirable natural resources such as the Nile River basin. The remaining clans migrated where they could, with stronger ones continually displacing the weaker. Some moved south to the African continent, and others moved east to Asia. The Ice Age was spreading across Europe, and groups who moved there were forced to adjust their lifestyles.

Genesis 10 records these migration routes, mentioning the incipient nations and territory.
In general, the Semites—descendants of Shem—retained control of the region of Mesopotamia, while the Japhethites migrated toward the northeast and northwest into Europe and Russia, and the Hamites moved south into Africa and east into Asia.

All groups took with them the knowledge of God, the Flood, and proper worship, as well as the false worship practiced at Babel. Many new civilizations constructed similar towers or pyramids and began worshiping the stars, using the same imaginary star pictures in the Zodiac. Written scripts were rapidly developed in numerous areas, using completely different systems and symbols.

Tribes living in the harsh environment of Ice Age Europe often lived in caves for safety and warmth, all the while losing pieces of their once-common knowledge as they adopted a hunter-gatherer mode of existence. Simultaneously, numerous budding civilizations accomplished great engineering feats that perhaps even today would be difficult to duplicate. These early people were hardly the ignorant subhumans that we often see depicted as recently evolved from the animals. Man was smart at the start because he had been created that way." ICR

Christ in the Holy Place of Revelation

1. Candlestick - at the 7 Churches/phases of Church history {Christ Enlightens His people}
2. Table of Shewbread - 7 Seals {Christ feeds His people}
3. Altar of Incense - 7 Trumpets {Christ intercedes for His people as He receives their Prayers}

1- John sees Christ walking among the 7 branch Candlestick as the 7 phases of Church history is laid out before him...And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man,
Revelation 1:13
2- As they move to the throne when the 7 Seals are opened.....the Table of Shewbread was on the north as is God's throne we are told in the OT...also, when Christ ascended He sat down on the throne on the right hand of the Father....that makes two on the throne together & the Table of Shewbread had two stacks of bread....also during the Seals there is a Famine & hunger, and the expense of the wheat & barley...And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, Revelation 4:2
3- John sees the Altar of Incense when the 7 Trumpets sound....the angel with the golden censer who offers up the prayers of God's people mixed with Incense as well as casts it to the earth filled with Fire....And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne....And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
Revelation 8:3,5

Even Sodom's Cemetery

"Genesis 14:2 refers to Sodom, Gomorrah, and three other “cities of the plain.” Excavations at Bab edh-Dhra southeast of the Dead Sea starting in the 1960s revealed many clues that match the Sodom account. For example, the city and even its nearby cemetery were burned from the top down and, in places, lie beneath several feet of ash even today.
Archaeology clearly confirms Genesis." ICR

--Open your Bible--

Why sit we here until we die?

2 Kings 7:3

"Dear reader, this little book was mainly intended for the edification of believers,
but if you are yet unsaved, our heart yearns over you:
Open your Bible, and read the story of the lepers, and mark their position, which was much the same as yours.

If you remain where you are you must perish; if you go to Jesus you can but die. ...

To perish is so awful,

that the instinct of self-preservation should lead you to stretch out your hand.

Jesus casts out none who come unto Him.
When you are saved yourself, publish the good news to others.
Hold not your peace; tell the King's household first, and unite with them in fellowship;
let the porter of the city, the minister, be informed of your discovery, and then proclaim the good news in every place. The Lord save thee ere the sun goes down this day."
Charles Spurgeon

Creation Moment 3/29/2017 - Fossil Microbes

"Recently, evolutionists discovered “microfossils up to almost ~~4.3 billion~~ years old” in Canada.
Their article states:

“It shows that some microbes have not changed significantly” since Earth’s early times, Papineau said. Earth formed about ~~4.5 billion years~~ ago and the oceans appeared about ~~4.4 billion years~~ ago. If the fossils are indeed ~~4.28 billion years~~ old, that would suggest “an almost instantaneous emergence of life” after ocean formation, Dodd said.

It is significant that these fossil microbes apparently didn’t change after ~~four billion~~ years—but evolution implies many, many changes over ~~millions of years~~. If evolution involves substantial

change, then why are these ancient microfossils so similar to modern microbes?

The article states the microbes “are similar to the bacteria that thrive today around sea floor hydrothermal vents” and “hydrothermal vents spewing hot water may have been the cradle of life on Earth relatively soon after the planet formed.” This brings us to a second point: The hardy life forms clustered around today’s hydrothermal vents are called extremophiles. They can survive punishing temperatures, high pressure, and toxic chemicals. Were these the first forms of life on Earth—having been fashioned by time, chance, and natural processes? In our advanced 21st century, secular biologists are still unaware of life’s origin:

How did cells arise? Of all the major questions posed by biologists, this question may be the least likely ever to be answered.

We should be aware that the sudden and spontaneous formation of organic life (unobserved “abiotic synthesis”) from inorganic non-life has yet to be documented either on the surface of the “primitive” Earth, or in the cracks in the ocean’s floor—the “iron-sulfur world” hypothesis. And it’s certainly never been empirically observed in a laboratory. Indeed, naturalistic philosophers despair in even defining what life actually is.

Finally, the article airily stated that the oceans “appeared.” But even water’s origin is an ongoing puzzle for the material scientist. “Astronomers [are still] looking for clues to water’s origins” stated a science news website. It recently has been suggested water covering the Earth may have had a more local origin, This is an interesting admission especially in the light of what the Apostle Paul said:

“Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them.” (Acts 14:15)

The biblical record is a testimony of One who made water and life..." ICR

Monday, March 27, 2017

On the Streets of Babylon: Washington Post

Babylon is fallen, is fallen,..
Come out of her, my people,

Revelation 14:8/18:4

The Washington Post seems to be found littering the Streets of Babylon by giving credibility to this "secret rapture" nonsense in 2017....talk about Fake News....

"Ray, a writer for the evangelical Christian publication Unsealed, views this eclipse as one of several astronomical signs that the day when Christians will be whisked away from the Earth is fast approaching.

“The Bible says a number of times that there’s going to be signs in the heavens before Jesus Christ returns to Earth. We see this as possibly one of those,” Ray said about the eclipse.

He is even more interested in another astronomical event that will occur 33 days after the eclipse, on Sept. 23, 2017.

The Book of Revelation, which is full of extraordinary imagery, describes a woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head” who gives birth to a boy who will “rule all the nations with an iron scepter” while she is threatened by a red, seven-headed dragon. The woman then grows the wings of an eagle and is swallowed up by the earth.

Ray says that image will be created in the sky on Sept. 23. The constellation Virgo — representing the woman — will be clothed in sunlight, in a position that is over the moon and under nine stars and three planets. The planet Jupiter, which will have been inside Virgo — in her womb, in Ray’s interpretation — will move out of Virgo, as if she is giving birth.

Astronomers don’t see this as a particularly unusual event. But to Ray and others, it could be the sign that the Rapture is ready to happen: “We think it’s God signaling to us that he’s about to make his next move.”

And Ray thinks the two eclipses that are slated to travel across the United States in 2017 and 2024, together marking an X across the nation, could be the starting and ending signs bookmarking a seven-year period of awful tribulations that Revelations says waits in store for nonbelievers who are left behind on Earth when the Rapture occurs." WashingtonPost

CHRIST's OBJECT LESSONS: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 28

The Reward of Grace

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WSAEc1W30eo?list=PL4ByrircmXL5UosnbsJhG1f_BnZUXmR6P

Only when selfishness is dead, when strife for supremacy is banished, when gratitude fills the heart, and love makes fragrant the life--it is only then that Christ is abiding in the soul. Oh, how different are the standards by which God and men measure character.

To the rich no less than to the poor are the words of the Holy Spirit spoken....
He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9

That TIME to DIE

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; ...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

"In the first eight verses of Ecclesiastes 3 there is a remarkable listing of 28 “times” arranged in 14 pairs of opposites (e.g., “a time to be born and a time to die”). Every timed event is planned by God and has a “purpose” (v. 1), and everything is “beautiful” in God’s time for it (v. 11).

Although it is beyond our finite comprehension, it is still bound to be true that the infinite, omnipotent God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11).

The time of our birth is, of course, not under our control, but we can certainly have a part in determining the occurrence of all the other 13 “times,” even the time of death. With the exception of those still living at the time of Christ’s return, each of us will eventually die. God has appointed a time for each individual, and it is wrong for him to shorten that time (by suicide or careless living, which can never be part of His will for any of us).

We should say with David, “My times are in thy hand” (Psalm 31:15), and seek to live in ways pleasing to Him as long as He allows us to live. We should pray that, when our time is finished, He will enable us to die in a manner that will be “beautiful in his time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Not one of us knows when that ordained “time to die” may be for us, so we must seek daily to “walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time” (Colossians 4:5)." HMM

"Widespread Continental Denudation" / "Big Flood"

And spared not the old world,
but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;2 Peter 2:5
Oh, I see, it's O.K. when evolutionists use the idea of a "Flood" to explain the earth's geological record...

"Another attempt to explain the Cambrian explosion proposes a global flood that tapped the capacity of simple animals to evolve new body plans suddenly.
... evolutionists have come up with several ad hoc mechanisms or question-begging arguments to tap dance around the Cambrian explosion (the sudden appearance of nearly all the animal phyla in a geological instant).

Another creative explanation sounds almost Biblical. Writing for the New York Times, Carl Zimmer described a global catastrophe that, rather than killing off life, enabled it to evolve. Leaning on the ideas of Paul Smith (Oxford U) and David Harper (U of Durham), the ones who hypothesized a “combo plate” model for causes of the explosion, Zimmer invoked a global flood:

But those genes evolved in bilaterians tens of millions of years before the Cambrian explosion put them to the test, notes Dr. Smith. “They had the capacity,”

he said, “but it hadn’t been expressed yet.”

It took a global flood to tap that capacity, Dr. Smith and Dr. Harper propose.

They base their proposal on a study published last year by Shanan Peters of the University of Wisconsin and Robert Gaines of Pomona College.

They offered evidence that the Cambrian Explosion was preceded by a rise in sea level that submerged vast swaths of land, eroding the drowned rocks.

Here’s how their paper in Science, “Causes of the Cambrian Explosion,” mentioned the big

Here's your BIG FLOOD

flood as one possible abiotic process for the explosion, on their combo plate of possible causes:

Major sea-level rise in the early, but not earliest, Cambrian led to the flooding of these interiors and triggered a range of Earth system responses, including the extensive erosion and mobilization of weathered rock and regolith and the rapid input of calcium, phosphate, and other ions into the oceans. Calcium concentrations in seawater increased almost threefold in the early Cambrian, and this input may have directly facilitated the origin of biomineralization. The input of phosphate provided simultaneous nutrient flux to shallow-water areas.

The paper by Peters and Gaines they referenced, from Nature in 2012, uses the Great Unconformity as evidence of a global flood, although they did not use the phrase “global flood.” Instead, they referred to “widespread continental denudation during the Neoproterozoic followed by extensive physical reworking of soil, regolith and basement rock during the first continental-scale marine transgression of the Phanerozoic.”

It’s not clear from the Nature paper whether the authors believe all the high mountains on Earth were covered by water. Suffice it to say, though, that they proposed that the denudation was continental in scope and had global consequences on the ocean and on life.

Additionally, they pointed to the fact that the Great Unconformity itself is global: it “can be traced across Laurentia and globally, including Gondwana, Baltica, Avalonia and Siberia, making it the most widely recognized and distinctive stratigraphic surface in the rock record.”
What’s striking is that creationists also look at the Great Unconformity as evidence for a global flood. They also believe, like Smith and Harper, that the flood involved “extensive erosion and mobilization of weathered rock and regolith”. Two major differences would be the timing of the flood (as well as its mechanism) and the emplacement of the fossil record as a consequence.

The evolutionists’ problems with the Cambrian explosion are far worse than they imagine. Still, it’s kind of funny when they take “global flood” out of the creationists’ explanatory toolkit and use it to try to unscrew the Darwin nut." CEH

SDA Issues - Orberg to be the SDA Oprah?

Response to the NONSENSE of Oberg follows the below story....

"In a ~~watershed~~ sermon on gender and sexuality, La Sierra University Church Senior Pastor Chris

Oberg explored reproductive discontinuity and gender dysphoria with her husband Kerby Oberg, a scientist and professor at Loma Linda University. The sermon came during a series titled "The Skin We're In" in which the La Sierra Church pastoral staff wove conversations with congregants and community members into their sermons.

Chris Oberg delivered her sermon "Make It Pink! Make It Blue!" on Saturday, March 11. The sermon pushed into territory the Seventh-day Adventist Church has avoided, certainly from the pulpit.

Reading from Genesis 1:27—“God created humankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”—Oberg said the story is easy in one sense. “There is male, there is female . . . get on with your life.” But she hastened to say, “It is simple until it’s not.” As recently as five years ago, conversations about gender could be expected to be about difference between men and women and nurturing and caring for one another. But referring to the National Geographic cover on gender, she noted how the conversation on gender has shifted.

The title of her sermon, “Make It Pink! Make It Blue!” derived from a scene in the Disney film Sleeping Beauty in which two fairy godmothers were fighting over the color of Princess Aurora’s ball gown. One wanted to make it pink, the other blue. Chris and Kerby’s daughters watched that scene of the film over and over, Chris said.

Kerby provided a precis on reproductive development and how chromosomes determine sex. Males and females begin the same, he said, with “undifferentiated or uncommitted” gonads. Approximately 25 genes are involved in transforming undifferentiated gonads into either testes or ovaries (at about

the 7th week of an embryo’s gestation), he noted. Local hormones are responsible for the formation of the internal reproductive “plumbing,” and systemic hormones are responsible for external features—appearance and so forth. Those systemic or “global” hormones also imprint “femaleness” or “maleness” on the brain. Those hormones are present at their highest level at about the 17th week of gestation. All this, Chris said, is if things proceed “according to the script.”

For the church, Kerby said he would hope to see further exploration, further dialogue and listening to the pain that people have.
“Could you imagine if this were Amanda or Alisa (the Obergs’ adult daughters)?” Chris asked.
“Yes,” Kerby said, as both teared up.
“Me too,” Chris said.
“It’s a lot of people,” Chris said.
“It is,” Kerby replied.
Chris thanked her husband for sharing. As he left the platform, Chris said to the audience, “This is proof that faith and science can live together.” CVV

RESPONSE:
1) A female pastor at La Sierra?....what does that say out of the starting gate? (yes-I went there)
2) A secular magazine, that most people don't read, is what is used for her point of reference in all this rather than Scripture? (let it be remembered, National Geographic also did a cover promoting a 9 year old transgender child. Clearly National Geographic has an agenda of pushing the secular notion that results in gender confusion)
3) They watched Sleeping Beauty, over & over again? And this is where they get their cues relating to this subject? Not from Scripture? Sleeping Beauty is what they draw on? 2 "fairy godmothers"?....'nuff said
4) They pull the stunt of tearing up to tug at emotions? They know what they are doing... don't think for a second, these 2 highly educated ADULTS don't know what they are doing while on stage. They are hoping emotions mean more to you than Scripture.
5) This Line Says It All--"proof that faith and science can live together"..as if there is conflict between faith & science...so that let's you peer into her mindset....There is NO conflict between faith & science, so where does that cliché form of thinking come from? It comes from those who believe Darwinian macro-evolution to be true so THEY SEE conflict through their prism. So the fact she said that line in the end about faith & science should tell you something about her worldview.
--BOTTOM LINE--- On the heels of the McLarty assault on the Word of God over the LGBT issue, we now have the Oberg shot over the bow of the Church.
McLARTY--Tried the pseudo-theistic approach by twisting Scriptures in order to reject Scriptures

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 2 Timothy 4:3

Oberg-- Tried the pointy headed intellectual approach ending with a morning TV talk show style ending..(maybe she wants to be the Oprah of Adventism and get a show of her own?...just a thought)

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Ephesians 6:11