Puritan Corner - The Reckoning

 "Sin is not so sweet in the committing as it is heavy and bitter in the reckoning."
by Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Galatians 6:7

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 29

The Sabbath

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ojEZXJnl8fU?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

The Sabbath was hallowed at the creation. It was a memorial of the work of creation, and thus a sign

of God's power and His love. The Sabbath calls our thoughts to nature, and brings us into communion with the Creator.
As the Jews departed from God, and failed to make the righteousness of Christ their own by faith, the Sabbath lost its significance to them. Satan was seeking to exalt himself and to draw men away from Christ, and he worked to pervert the Sabbath.
The object of God's work in this world is the redemption of man; therefore that which is necessary to be done on the Sabbath in the accomplishment of this work is in accord with the Sabbath law.
If it was right for David to satisfy his hunger by eating of the bread that had been set apart to a holy use, then it was right for the disciples to supply their need by plucking the grain upon the sacred hours of the Sabbath. Again, the priests in the temple performed greater labor on the Sabbath than upon other days. The same labor in secular business would be sinful; but the work of the priests was in the service of God. They were performing those rites that pointed to the redeeming power of Christ, and their labor was in harmony with the object of the Sabbath.
As a sign of His sanctifying power, the Sabbath is given to all who through Christ become a part of the Israel of God.

O Lord, how great are Thy works!
And Thy thoughts are very deep.
                                                 Psalm 92:5

17 Reasons SERIES: #1

17 Reasons why Christianity should NOT have succeeded....

"17 factors to be considered -- places where Christianity "did the wrong thing" in order to be a successful religion. It is my contention that the only way Christianity did succeed is because it was a truly revealed faith -- and because it had the irrefutable witness of the Resurrection." J.P.Holding

#1 -- Who Would Buy One Crucified?
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18

"With the exception of the Christ-mythers and conspiracy theorists (and I put Muslims in this rank,

where this issue is concerned), few would deny the historical reality of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus. But once that door is opened, it brings about the first of our problems: Who on earth would believe a religion centered on a crucified man?

As Martin Hengel has amply shown us in his monograph, Crucifixion, the shame of the cross was the result of a fundamental norm of the Greco-Roman Empire. Hengel observes that "crucifixion was an utterly offensive affair, 'obscene' in the original sense of the word." (22)
 As Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [263-4], crucifixion was a "status degradation ritual" designed to humiliate in every way, including the symbolic pinioning of hands and legs signifying a loss of power, and loss of ability to control the body in various ways, including befouling one's self with excrement.

It was recognized as early as Paul (1 Cor. 1:18; see also Heb. 12:2) that preaching a savior who underwent this disgraceful treatment was folly.

N. T. Wright makes these points in Resurrection of the Son of God [543, 559, 563]:

The argument at this point proceeds in three stages.  

(i) Early Christianity was thoroughly messianic, shaping itself around the belief that Jesus was God's Messiah, Israel's Messiah.  

(ii) But Messiahship in Judaism, such as it was, never envisaged someone doing the sort of things Jesus had done, let alone suffering the fate he suffered.  

(iii) The historian must therefore ask why the early Christians made this claim about Jesus, and why they reordered their lives accordingly." J.P.Holding

Easter Thoughts (courtesy of Witsius)

 "Dutch Puritan Herman Witsius (1636-1708). In his Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man,....

Witsius argued that all sufferings of Christ, including his
*birth in a manger,
*his temptation by Satan,
*his fatigue from his labors,
*his agony in Gethsemane,
*his scourging, his physical suffering on the cross,
*his torment of soul under the Father’s wrath,
*and even his time in the grave

was all done “in our room.”

 

 

Witsius is not unique among older Reformed authors on this point, but he wrote with exceptional clarity and precision. ...Among other things, this is how and why Christ transforms and sanctifies all of our trials to the profit of our souls."

RyanMcGraw

Creation Moment 3/31/2018 - Genesis & the Cross

"In Jesus’ Passion we discover that behind the universe is a God who treats every person with immeasurable value.

To the evolutionist the death of Christ makes no sense. Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker (ch. 4) said that we live in a universe that he thinks looks like it has ‘no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.’

‘Pitiless indifference’? Dawkins thinks that way because he thinks evolution is true, that we are just the product of blind, materialistic processes. If there is no God, then Dawkins is right. There is nothing out there that even knows you exist. And Dawkins tells you to get used to it.
But the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ destroy that desolate outlook.

Antony Flew, once described as the ‘world’s most notorious atheist’, surprised an audience in May 2004 when he announced a change of mind—that he ‘accepted the existence of a God’.

Previously, in 1985, Dr. Flew had debated philosopher and theologian Dr. Gary Habermas on this very question, the proposition that Jesus Christ conquered death itself. This debate was held in Dallas in front of a crowd of three thousand people. It was judged by two panels of experts from leading American universities: one panel comprised five philosophers who were asked to judge the content of the debate, and the other comprised five professional debate judges who were asked to judge the quality of the arguments.
Four of the five on the philosophers panel voted that Habermas had won, i.e. the case he made for the Resurrection was stronger than Flew’s attempts to refute it, and one scored it a draw.

It all hinges on Jesus’ Resurrection. The Apostle Paul wrote about Christ that he was ‘declared to be the Son of God with power … by the resurrection from the dead’ (Romans 1:4). We know that Jesus is who He claimed to be because of His Resurrection." CMI

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 28

Levi Matthew

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GgPG-9Z7Tw?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

To Matthew in his wealth, and to Andrew and Peter in their poverty, the same test was brought;
When the rabbis learned of the presence of Jesus at Matthew's feast, they seized the opportunity of accusing Him. But they chose to work through the disciples. By arousing their prejudices they hoped to alienate them from their Master. It was their policy to accuse Christ to the disciples, and the disciples to Christ, aiming their arrows where they would be most likely to wound. This is the way in which Satan has worked ever since the disaffection in heaven; and all who try to cause discord and alienation are actuated by his spirit....Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? (Matthew 9:11) questioned the envious rabbis.....It was this that proved the ruin of the Jews, and it will prove the ruin of many souls in our own day. Thousands are making the same mistake as did the Pharisees whom Christ reproved at Matthew's feast. Rather than give up some cherished idea, or discard some idol of opinion, many refuse the truth which comes down from the Father of light. They trust in self, and depend upon their own wisdom, and do not realize their spiritual poverty. They insist on being saved in some way by which they may perform some important work. When they see that there is no way of weaving self into the work, they reject the salvation provided.

Ephapax

For in that he died, he died unto sin once:

but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

                                                                   Romans 6:10

"The Greek word ephapax translated “once” in this verse actually means “once for all.” Christ did not have to die again and again, a new death for every sinner. He died unto sin once for all, His death being sufficient to take away “the sin of the [whole] world” (John 1:29).

The word ephapax occurs only five times in the Bible.

--Our text is the first, confirming that His once-for-all death for sin was sufficient forever; He now lives wholly “unto God.”

--The second confirms the reality of this permanent resurrection. In Jewish law, a factual claim was considered confirmed by the principle that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established” (Matthew 18:16). 

--The other three references are in Hebrews: “[He] needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once [that is, ‘once for all’], when he offered up himself.” “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once [‘once for all’] into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).

Once for all He died for sin, then with His own shed blood He entered into the presence of the Father, sanctified us forever, and was raised from the dead by impeccable testimony, once for all." HMM

IN the NEWS - Spain... Interesting...

And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull,

which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha:

John 19:17

Hmmm....Interesting...
"The Spanish flag will fly at half-mast on all military buildings

including the Ministry of Defence in Madrid to commemorate the death of Christ this Holy Week.
In a statement, the ministry said all units, bases, barracks will lower the flag from 2pm on Maundy Thursday to 12.01am on Easter Sunday “as is traditional”."
CatholicHerald

Papal Notes - Francis in Hot Water on "Hell"

"In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just "disappear." This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.

Scalfari says to the Pope, "Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?"

Pope Francis says,  "They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate

him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls." CSN

Uhm....
1- People are not saved because they "Contemplate" God. They are saved by His Justification/Grace after which God expects them to be on the path of Sanctification/Obedience.
2- There is a hell, in the future, the Lake of Fire which annihilates the wicked once and for all.
3- Hmmm...how will Catholics, who believe in immortality of the soul-whether in heaven or their version of hell, and of course purgatory, now be forced to spin these comments of Francis?

Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelation 20:14,15 NLT

Creation Moment 3/30/2018 - Goodall vs. God

"Ken Ham, a Young Earth Creationist, has offered a rebuttal to a recent argument made by world-famous primatologist Jane Goodall that humans inherited their "evil dark side" from ape-like ancestors.

Goodall told The Mirror earlier this month that her nearly 60 years of research on chimpanzees has led her to realize that the warlike nature of primates is quite similar to that of human beings.

"I didn't know chimpanzees can rip your face off. There was no one talking about that," Goodall, now 83, says of when she began studying chimpanzees in Tanzania.
Speaking about her son, Grub, who she had with husband and National Geographic photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick, she recalled: "It was dangerous for him at Gombe. Chimpanzees eat other primates. They have been known to take infant humans. I wasn't going to risk my little precious son."

She detailed the dark nature of some of the groups of chimps that would viciously fight against rival groups for years, until the opposition had been completely wiped out.
"I'd no idea of the brutality they could show. War always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. I've come to accept that the dark, evil side of human nature is deeply embedded in our genes, inherited from our primate ancestors," Goodall said.

Ham argued that Goodall is making the mistake of adapting a naturalistic evolutionary idea about humans.
"We don't have a 'dark, evil side' because we inherited it from some ape-like ancestors; we are sinful because we are descendants of Adam. You see, Adam, the first man, rebelled against God and brought sin and death into Creation." (For since by man came death,..1 Corinthians 15:21). "And Adam's sin is the reason chimps can be brutal and engage in 'war.' Adam's rebellion broke creation and now everything groans, including animals such as chimps." (For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Romans 8:22)."
CP

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 27

Thou Canst Make Me Clean

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/EVF3BY5fw-I?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

The work of Christ in cleansing the leper is an illustration of His work in cleansing the soul from sin.
In the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum, Christ again taught the same truth. It was to manifest His power to forgive sins that the miracle was performed.
Whoever will fall at His feet, saying in faith, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean, shall hear the answer, I will; be thou made clean. Matthew 8:2, 3
 

The Fruit Under His Shadow

I sat down under His shadow with great delight,
 and His fruit was sweet to my taste.

Song Of Solomon 2:3

The spouse knew her Beloved to be like a fruit-bearing tree, and at once she sat under His shadow, and fed upon His fruit. It is a pity that we can know so much about Christ, and yet enjoy Him so little.

 If Jesus is as an apple tree among the trees of the woods, do not keep away from Him,
*but sit under His shadow,
*and taste His fruit.

He is a Savior- do not believe the fact and yet remain unsaved.

A physician lives to heal.

The Good Shepherd lives, yes, dies, for His sheep.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has wrapped us about His heart; we are intimately interwoven
*with all His offices,
*with all His honors,
*with all His traits of character,
*with all that He has done, and with all that He has yet to do.
The 'sinners' Friend lives for sinners, and sinners may have Him and use Him to the uttermost. He is as free to us as the air we breathe."
Charles Spurgeon

IN the NEWS - Indoctrination in Sacramento Burbs

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,

 and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Genesis 6:5

 

"A California charter school association gave its highest award to the kindergarten teacher whose transgender lesson last summer without warning parents left some of the 5-year-olds traumatized.
The decision of the California Charter Schools Association to name Kaelin Swaney its Teacher of the Year makes it “clear the CCSA does not stand with parents,” says Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute, a pro-family public policy group.

“The CCSA should be ashamed of themselves,” England said in a March 27 press release.
A teacher at Rocklin Academy Gateway, an elite charter school in the Sacramento suburbs, Swaney touched off a bitter controversy when she read the book “I am Jazz” to her students before explaining their classmate, a boy, was now a “girl” and would be called by a girl’s name, England recounted.
“I am Jazz” is explicitly pro-transgender and begins: “From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”

Parents were not told in advance about the lesson, which took place just before the school’s summer recess in June 2017, nor that the kindergarten student was “transitioning.”

But a number of parents became outraged when their children came home upset. According to England, some of the kids were “crying, afraid they were turning into the opposite sex,” and one boy was “afraid to touch his sister’s toys in fear of becoming a girl.”
The Rocklin Academy board defended Swaney, countering that the California law requiring schools give parents notice and a chance to opt out for sex education did not apply because gender identity is not sex education. It also alleged that it was open to legal action for discrimination if it did not affirm the boy’s gender “transition.”
As a result of the dispute, some 90 children have been pulled from the school, according to a California Family Council (CFC) report."
Lifesite

Creation Moment 3/29/2018 - Wurmbrand & Darwin

"Was Charles Darwin in any way responsible for the torture of Christians 90 years later?

..... 50th anniversary, the Christian Ministry Voice of the Martyrs premiered its movie Tortured for Christ in theaters across America.

The movie is a dramatization of true events in the life of Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor

imprisoned and tortured for 14 years in communist prisons in Romania in the 1950s. The film crew was allowed to use the actual prison where the events took place: episodes of extreme brutality and unspeakable horror, including vicious beatings, deprivations, hanging upside down while being poked with hot irons, being held in solitary confinement for 3 years, suffering from tuberculosis without treatment and being left to die. And why was Pastor Wurmbrand treated so? Because of his Christian faith. His allegiance to Christ did not allow him to compromise with the Stalinist plan of ‘registered’ churches, which became puppets of the regime, controlled and dominated by the State. His love for the brethren did not allow him to betray them, even when it might have reduced his own beatings and tortures. He watched other prisoners whose fate would be even worse: 25 years or more of imprisonment and torture.

Pastor Wurmbrand’s wife Sabrina was also arrested and sent to a hard labor camp for 3 years, the guards leaving her two children behind to fend for themselves. Along with hundreds of other women prisoners, she was forced to move heavy wheelbarrow loads of soil every day in the cold outdoors for a useless canal project. At one point, when she stumbled and fell, the guards mocked her for getting dirty, and threw her into the icy cold river. She barely got out alive as they laughed at her and mocked her faith: ‘Where is your God now to save you?”

As Russian communists swept into Romania in 1948, they brought with them the ideology that had turned the Soviet Union into a house of horrors. Atheism became the state religion. The contrast between the Christians and the communists, as revealed in the film, cannot be overstated. Communism turned men into monsters. At one point during his beatings, Wurmbrand cries out to the guard, “Have you no pity for a fellow human being?” The guard laughs, explaining that since there is no God, there is no good or evil. 
 At another point, when a guard rails on Wurmbrand for being caught in prayer again, telling it was useless to pray to his imaginary God, he shouted (paraphrased), “Your wife is a prisoner, your

children are without help, you will not get out of here alive; what are you praying for?” The guard’s look of rage and consternation at Wurmbrand’s answer illustrates the contrast of ideologies: “I was praying for you.”

In the opening moments of the movie, three names are revealed that led to these events: Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx. Since Nietzsche was a Darwinian, and Marx looked to Darwin for the scientific justification for his views, the fingers of history point to the remaining one man who pushed the domino that started a chain reaction reaching to the horrors of that Romanian prison. That one man was Charles Darwin. Was there ever a more dramatic illustration of the proverb, “Ideas have consequences”?" CEH

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;

but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 26

At Capernaum

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNtwi_1IAew?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

The same evil spirit that tempted Christ in the wilderness, and that possessed the maniac of Capernaum, controlled the unbelieving Jews. But with them he assumed an air of piety. History is repeating. With the open Bible before them, and professing to reverence its teachings, many of the religious leaders of our time are destroying faith in it as the word of God. They busy themselves with dissecting the word, and set their own opinions above its plainest statements. In their hands God's word loses its regenerating power. This is why infidelity runs riot, and iniquity is rife. When Satan has undermined faith in the Bible, he directs men to other sources for light and power. Thus he insinuates himself. Criticism and speculation concerning the Scriptures have opened the way for spiritism and theosophy--those modernized forms of ancient heathenism--to gain a foothold even in the professed churches of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The demoniac, in place of prayer, could utter only the words of Satan; yet the heart's unspoken appeal was heard. No cry from a soul in need, though it fail of utterance in words, will be unheeded.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32

 

Dealing With Those Philosophers...

Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered Him.

And some said, What will this babbler say? other some,

 He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods:

because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

Acts 17:18

"The important ministry of Paul in Athens (the cultural center of the world of his day) was climaxed in this confrontation with two groups of philosophers representing the spectrum of all humanistic evolutionary systems of past or present.
--The Epicureans were essentially atheists, devoted to the cultivation of pleasure as the chief aim of life.
--The Stoicks were pantheists, dedicated to passive acceptance of whatever happens.

In all essentials, these were no different than the evolutionary humanistic systems of the present day.

Any philosophy that rejects special creation also must reject the atoning death and bodily resurrection of the Creator, so the Athenian philosophers regarded Paul's preaching as nothing but strange babbling.

Paul did not try to "dialogue" with them in the context of their own philosophies,
--but appealed rather to the evidence of creation and their intuitive awareness, supported by the ancient traditions of the entire human race, that their "UNKNOWN GOD" was the "God that made the world and all things therein" (Acts 17:23-24).
--Furthermore, this Creator God had demonstrated His identity to all men "in that He hath raised Him from the dead" (Acts 17:31).

Since these ancient pagan philosophies were essentially no different from either modern atheistic evolutionism -- all rejecting or ignoring the God of the Bible -- we might do well to emulate Paul's method of reaching them." HMM

ARCHAEOLOGY: Upside Down

"A new research paper claims to have solved the mystery of why most ankylosaur dinosaur fossils are found upside down. Lead author Dr. Jordan Mallon, from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, explains, “Textbooks have touted that ankylosaur fossils are usually found upside down, but no one has gone back and checked the records to make sure that’s the case.” 

Mallon collaborated with academics from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta and armadillo scholars from Valdosta State University in Georgia. Their primary goal was to investigate the widely held view that most ankylosaurs were buried belly-up. They also wanted to test some

proposed explanations for this apparent phenomenon, including whether they could have bloated and rolled over, as some have suggested happen to dead armadillos.

“One idea was that ankylosaurs were simply clumsy, tripping over themselves or rolling down hills and ending up dying that way,” said Jordan. Another idea suggested that carnivores may have turned them over to eat their soft underbellies.

To test these hypotheses, the team examined 36 ankylosaur specimens from across the province of Alberta and found that 26 (over 70%) were deposited upside-down. They carefully examined the bones for bite marks and reported only 1 out of 32 ankylosaurs (specimens that had a sufficient number of bone fossils to study bite marks) had any evidence of carnivore activity—effectively ruling out that possibility.

In addition, they studied 174 dead armadillos in the field, finding no correlation between bloating and upside-down posture. In fact, only 6 of 22 dead armadillos were determined to have bloated and rolled over. And some of these actually rolled onto their stomachs.

Finally, the scientists used computer models that allowed the scientists to test the “bloat-and-float” concept, finding “strong statistical support for the dominance of upside-down occurrences, and favor a ‘bloat-and-float’ model to account for them. According to this model, ankylosaur carcasses became reworked into fluvial or marine settings where they bloat and overturn prior to their final

deposition.”

The authors also noted that many ankylosaur fossils, particularly the nodosaur variety, are commonly found in marine sediments, as are most of the dinosaur fossils found across Europe. Did virtually all these dinosaurs somehow happen to fall into rivers and float out to sea as many secular scientists claim? Did 26 of 36 carcasses casually flip upside-down in the water? Or is there a better explanation for these upside-down ankylosaurs?

The global Flood seems to provide the perfect answer to this global phenomenon. The floodwaters would have quickly inundated and drowned ankylosaurs. The dinosaurs would have floated along, most of them tumbling into an upside-down position, and then been deposited in sediments quickly enough to preserve their bones as fossils." ICR

And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth;

Genesis 7:18

Creation Moment 3/28/2018 - Protein Robots

"All living cells that we know of on this planet are 'DNA software'-driven biological machines

*comprised of hundreds of thousands of protein robots,
*coded for by the DNA,
*that carry out precise functions. 
 We are now using computer software to design new DNA software."
Craig Venter, Trinity College Dublin, July 12, 2012

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Psalm 139:14 NLT

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 25

The Call by the Sea

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/t7frcF3F5OY?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

God takes men as they are, and educates them for His service, if they will yield themselves to Him.

After toiling all night without success, it seemed hopeless to cast the net by day; but Jesus had given the command, and love for their Master moved the disciples to obey. Simon and his brother together let down the net. As they attempted to draw it in, so great was the quantity of fish enclosed that it began to break. They were obliged to summon James and John to their aid. When the catch was secured, both the boats were so heavily laden that they were in danger of sinking.
 This miracle, above any other he had ever witnessed, was to him a manifestation of divine power.  While his companions were securing the contents of the net, Peter fell at the Saviour's feet, exclaiming, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. Luke 5:8
Humanity, with its weakness and sin, was brought in contrast with the perfection of divinity, and he felt altogether deficient and unholy. Thus it has been with all who have been granted a view of God's greatness and majesty.

R.I.P. Larry...

The righteous perish, 
and no one takes it to heart;

the devout are taken away,....

Isaiah 57:1

Larry's Killers have been caught. Some were arrested in Tennessee

by police and one in Texas by U.S. Marshalls. After high school Larry moved to Tennessee. I went to visit him in the 80's a few weeks before I went into the Air Force. Then in the 90's he came up to Indiana to visit me while in college for a couple of days. That was the last time I saw him...R.I.P. Larry....



Faces of evil.....

Creation Moment 3/27/2018 - Jewel of the Solar System

In the beginning God created the heaven.......Genesis 1:1
"When the Creator finished Saturn on Day Four of Creation Week, surely he grinned in satisfaction.
Far from the sun, Saturn is strikingly different from earth. A giant planet made almost entirely of gas and liquid, Saturn is over 750 times the earth’s volume.

*While earth has the greatest density of any planet in our solar system, Saturn has the lowest.
*Earth is solid like the other inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars),
*while Saturn is a gas planet like the other outer planets (Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus), made up mostly of hydrogen and helium.

One of the most fascinating and surprising touches God gave Saturn is its bright rings, earning it the

nickname Jewel of the Solar System. While other gas planets have rings, none are as spectacular as Saturn’s, and this prompted astronomers to think more deeply about how a planet could acquire these beautiful, mysterious (and unexpected) features.

Evolutionists once speculated that the rings developed billions of years ago when an asteroid crashed into the planet or its moons, causing a circle of debris. But Cassini uncovered just how dynamic the rings are...“The observed changes in Saturn’s rings during the Cassini mission showed that Saturn’s rings are far younger than the 4.5 billion years most planetary scientists think,” observes Danny Faulkner.

During its final passes through the rings, Cassini measured their gravitational pull and confirmed they’re too light to have lasted billions of years. Furthermore, measurements of the dust coming from the outer solar system show that the icy rings are too clean to be billions of years old." CMI
 

Sacred Moment of Prayer

Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication,

 O LORD my God,

to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer,

which thy servant prayeth before thee to day:

1 Kings 18:28

"If you loved God you would love the hour of prayer, and while

others are praying would close your eyes and would try to fix your mind on God and would be lifting your heart to Him for strength to do right through the day. God deserves your gratitude and love. And while you lack in these things you cannot be the children of God."
Manuscript Releases vol.13.p.34 E.G.W. 

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 24

 Is Not This the Carpenter's Son

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/s2NiPMir6U0?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

The people of Nazareth rejected Him. Is not this the carpenter's son? they said. Matthew 13:55
The words of Jesus to His hearers in the synagogue struck at the root of their self-righteousness, pressing home upon them the bitter truth that they had departed from God and forfeited their claim to be His people.
Who is this Jesus? they questioned. Unbelief, having once been cherished, continued to control the men of Nazareth. So it controlled the Sanhedrin and the nation. With priests and people, the first rejection of the demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power was the beginning of the end.
What a contrast between His teaching in regard to the new kingdom and that which they had heard from their elder! Jesus had said nothing of delivering them from the Romans. They had heard of His miracles, and had hoped that His power would be exercised for their advantage, but they had seen no indication of such purpose.
As they opened the door to doubt, their hearts became so much the harder for having been momentarily softened.

Fear God means.....

"In good men, the fear of God is a holy awe or reverence of God and his laws, which springs from a just view and real love of the divine character, leading the subjects of it to hate and shun every thing that can offend such a holy being, and inclining them to aim at perfect obedience. This is filial fear."
NKJV Dictionary

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:

Fear God, and keep his commandments:

for this is the whole duty of man.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

Creation Moment 3/26/2018 - A Darwinian Play in Action

"As a play, Darwinism has two subplots:

*natural selection and
*sexual selection.
With a little creative screenwriting, any observation in nature can be fit into either or both subplots, provided the perhapsimaybecouldness index is sufficiently elevated.

Triceratops may have had horns to attract mates (BBC News). No living scientist has ever seen a horned dinosaur except for bones in the ground. Certainly no one has watched a triceratops mating display. These evolutionists, imaginations shining in vivid color, speculate that the beasts advertised their fitness with their big frills and horns. (Note: It’s OK in Darwin plays to change the subplots around, as long as the final act is never compromised.)

Ceratopsian, or horned dinosaurs, were previously thought

to have developed this ornamentation to distinguish between different species.

This has now been ruled out in a study published in a Royal Society journal.

Instead, the aggressive-looking armour may actually have evolved to signal an animal’s suitability as a partner, known as socio-sexual selection.

 

 How socio-sexual selection differs from plain vanilla sexual selection is not clear. But it doesn’t matter, because the Darwin play is always a work in progress. “Further work will now be done to test whether socio-sexual selection is the motivating factor behind the evolution of these ornaments.” How anyone can test such thing on bones in the dirt is unspecified.

 

Why aren’t humans ‘knuckle-walkers?’ (Phys.org). Evolutionists at Case Western Reserve University demonstrate how to put any observation into the Darwin play. Add a drum roll and dramatic music.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have cracked the evolutionary mystery of why chimpanzees and gorillas walk on their knuckles: The short explanation is that these African apes climb trees and they are mobile on the ground.

Occam’s razor might simply say that each animal has the locomotion suited to its habitat. But that would not do for the Darwin theater. There must be drama! There must be mystery! There must be evolution!

Genetic analysis uncovers the evolutionary origin of vertebrate limbs: The genetic toolkit that patterns limbs originally came about to form the dorsal fins of fishes (Science Daily). Dorsal fins are not limbs, but that doesn’t matter. In the Darwin theater, observations are mere props. The first sentence makes sure everyone has their VR imagination headset on, so that the story can begin:

As you picture the first fish to crawl out of primordial waters onto land, it’s easy to imagine how its paired fins eventually evolved into the arms and legs of modern-day vertebrates, including humans. But a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago and the Andalusian Center for Development Biology in Spain shows how these creatures used an even more primitive genetic blueprint to develop their proto-limbs: the single dorsal, or back, fin common to all jawed fish."
CEH
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness,
 the beginning of the creation of God;
Revelation 3:14 

DESIRE OF AGES: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 23

The Kingdom of God Is at Hand

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/72mXwdgWPrY?list=PL4ByrircmXL6qt2QplU6IudoOYVgzBS3C

Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. Mark 1:14, 15.
 *A day in prophecy stands for a year. The seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety days, represent four hundred and ninety years. A starting point for this period is given: Know therefore and

understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks, sixty-nine weeks, or four hundred and eighty-three years. Daniel 9:25.
*The commandment to restore and build Jerusalem, as completed by the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus, went into effect in the autumn of B. C. 457. From this time four hundred and eighty-three years extend to the autumn of A. D. 27.
*According to the prophecy, this period was to reach to the Messiah, the Anointed One. In A. D. 27, Jesus at His baptism received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and soon afterward began His ministry.
*He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week [seven years]. For seven years after the Savior entered on His ministry, the gospel was to be preached especially to the Jews; for three and a half years by Christ Himself; and afterward by the apostles.
*In the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. Daniel 9:27. In the spring of A. D. 31, Christ the true sacrifice was offered on Calvary. Then the veil of the temple was rent in twain, showing that the sacredness and significance of the sacrificial service had departed. The time had come for the earthly sacrifice and oblation to cease.
*The one week--seven years--ended in A. D. 34. Then by the stoning of Stephen the Jews finally sealed their rejection of the gospel; the disciples who were scattered abroad by persecution went everywhere preaching the word. Acts 8:4
As the light and life of men was rejected by the ecclesiastical authorities in the days of Christ, so it has been rejected in every succeeding generation. Again and again the history of Christ's withdrawal from Judea has been repeated. When the Reformers preached the word of God, they had no thought of separating themselves from the established church; but the religious leaders would not tolerate the light....The Jews misinterpreted and misapplied the word of God, and they knew not the time of their visitation. The years of the ministry of Christ and His apostles,--the precious last years of grace to the chosen people,--they spent in plotting the destruction of the Lord's messengers. Earthly ambitions absorbed them, and the offer of the spiritual kingdom came to them in vain. So today the kingdom of this world absorbs men's thoughts, and they take no note of the rapidly fulfilling prophecies and the tokens of the swift-coming kingdom of God.

Proof He is Passing By

My beloved spake, and said unto me,
Rise up,

my love,

my fair one,

and come away.

Song Of Solomon 2:10

 

"What a loving call! What astonishing condescension, that the Heavenly Bridegroom should use such words to-whom? Would you not like to be able to fill up that blank, and say, 'My Beloved spake, and

said unto me!'

Perhaps you think this is too much for you. You feel too sinful and unworthy to be so loved,-too defiled to be called 'my fair one.' 

 If so, will you turn to a wonderful picture of those upon whom He sets His love.

I will not quote it here, because I want you to go to His own Book for it. See in it how the Lord Jesus goes down to the very depths, (Psalm 40:2) and begins at the very beginning. Your case is not deeper than those depths; for it is even when we are dead in sins that the great love wherewith God loved us reaches and raises us.

The call to arise and come away is a proof that He is passing by.

Read on, and see what He will do 'then!' 'Then' the 'thoroughly' (Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:2) washing and the anointing which prepares you for the delight of the King. 'Then' the clothing, the girding and the covering, each with their treasures of significance. (The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. Psalm 45:13).

Rise up and come away from all that pollutes and separates you from Him."
Frances Ridley Havergal

From Babel to the Deccan Plateau

"If modern humans left Africa 185,000 years ago or more, why does the oldest language in India date back less than 3% of that time?

How old is the oldest human language? It’s tough to say. Using linguistic analysis and statistics, scientists from the Max Planck Institute have estimated the date of the Dravidian family of languages on the southern parts of India at 4,500 years old. Phys.org reports that Dravidians were present a thousand years before Indo-Aryans arrived in India. 80 derived dialects of the ancient language family are still spoken today by some 220 million people.

“The study of the Dravidian languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, as they played a significant role in influencing other language groups,” explains corresponding author Annemarie Verkerk of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language nor its exact dispersal through time is known with certainty. The consensus of the research community is that the Dravidians are natives of the Indian subcontinent and were present prior to the arrival of the Indo-Aryans (Indo-European speakers) in India around 3,500 years ago. It is likely that the Dravidian languages were much more widespread to the west in the past than they are today.

The estimate appears to be on the high side, pushing back the language earlier than previously thought, but not more than 4,500 years in total.

The researchers used advanced statistical methods to infer the age and subgrouping of the Dravidian language family at about 4,000-4,500 years old. This estimate, while in line with suggestions from previous linguistic studies, is a more robust result because it was found consistently in the majority of the different statistical models of evolution tested in this study. This age also matches well with inferences from archaeology, which have previously placed the diversification of Dravidian into North, Central, and South branches at exactly this age, coinciding with the beginnings of cultural developments evident in the archaeological record.

 This new date is younger than earlier estimates of 6,000 years or even 13,000 years. In any case, the start date for this language family is far, far younger than evolutionary estimates of the time modern humans have existed in Asia.

On the one hand, they wish to think that our equals ‘evolved’ over 300,000 years ago, and soon after that migrated into Europe and Asia. Also, when they got there, they had no trouble interbreeding with the Neanderthals. But then, at the other extreme, one of the oldest language groups dates back no more than 4,500 years ago. What did people like us do for 295,000 years? What did they say to one another? Why didn’t they build permanent cities? Did they really live in caves all that time? Why is the first civilization so late in arriving?

Language “evolves” by intelligent design, not by natural selection. Once endowed with a common language, people can decide what they want certain words to mean, and what grammatical rules they want to modify for convenience, or to fit new situations. By habit, separate groups will develop dialects, which will diverge further over time. That’s what happened in American English in just a few centuries. Today’s various Dravidian languages and dialects continue to point back to that original grouping that settled in the area long ago after Babel." CEH

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language,...

Genesis 11:7