Puritan Corner - Retire to the Promises

"When thou art disappointed with men, retire to God and to his promises."

 by Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) 

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

2 Corinthians 1:20

Fusing The Two Sabbath Texts

"An important distinction between the two texts on this

commandment is their grounding in creation and redemption, respectively. 

 

In Exodus, the Sabbath is rooted in the six days of creation followed by a day of rest (Gen. 1:3-2:3). 

 

Deuteronomy adds the element of God’s redemption. “The Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day” (Deut. 5:15). 

 

Bringing the two together, we see that the foundations for keeping the sabbath are both the way God made us and the way he redeems us." TOW

Creation Moment 2/28/2022 - The "Thrill" of the Creation

 Is not God in the height of heaven? 

and behold the height of the stars, 

how high they are!

Job 22:12 

A composition radio (purple), UV (yellow) and X-ray (blue) image of the Cygnus loop supernova remnant in the Milky Way is shown. 

"Each time we create a map our screens are filled with new discoveries and objects that have never before been seen by human eyes. Exploring the unfamiliar phenomena that glow in the energetic radio universe is such an incredible experience and our team is thrilled to be able to release these maps publicly," said astronomer Timothy Shimwell." CNN

The Forgotten Ironside "Debate"

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

 

"In San Francisco, a man once challenged Dr. Harry Ironside to a

debate on ‘Agnosticism19 versus Christianity’. 

 

Dr Ironside agreed, on one condition: that the agnostic first provide evidence that agnosticism was beneficial enough to defend. 

 

Dr. Ironside challenged the agnostic to bring one man who had been a ‘down-and-outer’ (a drunkard, criminal, or such) and one woman who had been trapped in a degraded life (such as prostitution), and show that both of these people had been rescued from their lives of degradation through embracing the philosophy of agnosticism. 

 

Dr. Ironside undertook to bring 100 men and women to the debate who had been gloriously rescued through believing the Gospel the agnostic ridiculed. The skeptic withdrew his challenge to debate Dr. Ironside." CMI

God's Two-Fold Message of Deuteronomy SUMMARIZED

1- Seek the Lord your God, 

and you will find Him if you search after Him 

with all your heart and soul. 

(Deut. 4:29)

 2- For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; 

the Lord your God has chosen you 

out of all the peoples on earth to be His people, 

His treasured possession. 

(Deut. 7:6)

Creation Moment 2/27/2022 - 4,400,000? Tip of the Iceberg?

 Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them....

Genesis 15:5

 

"Some 4.4 million space objects billions of light-years away have been mapped by astronomers, including 1 million space objects that hadn't been spotted before.

The observations were made by analyzing a huge amount of data from the sensitive Low Frequency Array telescope, known as LOFAR, which is using low radio frequencies to observe about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's sky and catalog it in fine detail."  

AshleyStrickland

The dragon’s declaration of war

 Revelation 12
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to
make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the
commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus
Christ.

 
"God will have His followers united in His worship, andbrought into the “unity of the faith,” by keeping the Holy Sabbath; also, the second commandment, in refusing to worship
the image of the beast, by not keeping Sunday.

 
The opposite will have his followers united, and in unity, in
his image worship, by keeping Sunday. And he makes war
with the remnant for keeping the opposite commandments:
the Holy Sabbath and not worshiping an image, in keeping
Sunday.

 
This is the bone of contention. 

This is the foundation of the dragon’s declaration of war with the remnant." James White

Papal Notes - Attempt at Stout

And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. Daniel 7:20

"The Vatican press office confirmed that Pope Francis made a visit
to the Russian Embassy to the Holy See to express his concern about the fighting in Ukraine on Friday morning.

The Russian Embassy to the Holy See is a short distance outside of Vatican City situated on the road leading into St. Peter's Square, and this was seen by most as a strong personal papal initiative.

The pope's surprise and unprecedented visit to the embassy took many Vatican watchers by surprise, as it is normal protocol for ambassadors to come to the Vatican to meet with the pope." ABC

Creation Moment 2/26/2022 - polyP

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! 

Psalm 139:14 NLT

"Yet another layer of complexity has been added to the lowly

bacterial cell. It has been discovered they can undergo genetic silencing to guard themselves from mutations. A researcher stated this finding is “an extremely important system that had not been appreciated until now."

Prior to this discovery, it was thought all parts of the circular chromosome of the bacteria were fully expressed. In other words, the bacterium could not control chromosome accessibility.

 

Now it’s been discovered bacteria can regulate their gene (DNA) expression by way of a simple but interesting energy-rich molecule called polyphosphate (or polyP)—ubiquitous in the living world. 

 

--It targets a specific protein in the bacterial genome (the total genetic information) that contains problematic elements (e.g. prophages), preventing their transcription (production of RNA molecules using the bacterial DNA strand as a template). 

--Such an important step silences parts of a bacterium’s chromosome (genetic elements) that can cause problems such as harmful mutations. 

--When polyphosphate is absent there is a mobilization of deleterious transposons (DNA elements) and prophages, resulting in cell death via DNA damage.

 

This discovery of self-protection through selective genetic silencing indicates that bacteria are once again far from simple cells and reflects the mind of the all-wise Creator." ICR

Digging Deep Into the Tower of Babel

"Nimrod founds an empire of naked aggression based in Babylon. 

He is a tyrant, 

a mighty hunter to be feared, 

and most significantly a builder of cities.

 

Babel, like many cities in the ancient Near East is designed as a

walled enclosure of a great temple or ziggurat, a mud-brick stair tower designed to reach to the realm of the gods. 

With such a tower, people could ascend to the gods, and the gods could descend to earth. .....we see in it the self-aggrandizing ambition and escalating sin of pride that drives these people to begin building such a mighty tower. "Let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:4).

 

Q: What did they want? 

A: Fame. 

Q: What did they fear? 

A: Being scattered without the security of numbers. 

 

The tower they envisioned building seemed huge to them, but the Genesis narrator smiles while telling us that it was so puny that God "came down to see the city and the tower" (Gen. 11:5).....they intend to use the creative power they possess as image-bearers of God to act against God’s purposes. 

 

In this case, they plan to do the opposite of what God commanded in the cultural mandate. 

--Instead of filling the earth, they intend to concentrate themselves here in one location. 

--Instead of exploring the fullness of the name God gave them—adam, “humankind” (Gen. 5:2)—they decide to make a name for themselves. 

 

God sees that their arrogance and ambition are out of bounds and says, "Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech” (Gen. 11:7).

 

Bruce Waltke concludes his analysis of Genesis 11 in these words: 

Society apart from God is totally unstable. On the one hand, people earnestly seek existential meaning and security in their collective unity. On the other hand, they have an insatiable appetite to consume what others possess....At the heart of the city of man is love for self and hatred for God. The city reveals that the human spirit will not stop at anything short of usurping God's throne in heaven.

--While it might appear that God’s scattering of the peoples is a

punishment, in fact it is also a means of redemption. 

From the beginning, God intended people to disperse across the world. “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). By scattering people after the fall of the tower, God put people back on the path of filling the earth, ultimately resulting in the beautiful array of peoples and cultures that populate it today. 

--If people had completed the tower under a singularity of malicious intent and social tyranny, with the result that “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (Gen. 11:6), we can only imagine the horrors they would have worked in their pride and strength of sin. The scale of evil worked by humanity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries gives a mere glimpse of what people might do if all things were possible without dependence on God."

TOW

Sabbath is in Christ and Christ is in the Sabbath

"God’s rest is in the seventh day; and God’s rest is in Christ. 

It is impossible for God’s rest to be in antagonistic places; for as with God “there is no variableness neither shadow of turning,” (James 1:17) God’s rest is the same wherever it may be. 

Therefore, God’s rest being ever the same, 

God’s rest in the seventh day, 

and God’s rest in Christ, 

is precisely the same rest. 

And this, being impossible to be in antagonism, is in perfect unity, and therefore demonstrates that the Sabbath is in Christ and Christ is in the Sabbath."

A.T. Jones

Creation Moment 2/25/2022 - Simple yet Elegant

God saw that it was good...Genesis 1:25

"Graduate student Shiuan-Tze Wu led a study of some ingenious

organization into the odor-sensing cells of fruit flies. He and his collaborators found that the odor-detector cells in the insects’ antennae talk to one another in a way that saves brainpower. It’s all so impressive that the senior author of the report called it “simple yet elegant,” according to the UC San Diego News Center.
 

They ran a series of tests on the cells, each called an olfactory receptor neuron (ORN). The cells partner up into sets called sensilla—mostly in pairs, but sometimes in groups of up to four cells.

Their results showed that one neuron in the set stimulates a particular behavior, while its partner neuron inhibits that same behavior. Example fruit fly behaviors include attraction to vinegar or promotion of egg-laying. The PNAS study authors wrote, “A striking pattern emerged…ORNs housed in the same sensillum antagonistically regulate the same behavior.”

--The team built an olfactory map that identifies exactly which receptor pairs detect and process specific odors.  

--Researchers refer to the electrochemical interaction between these cells as valence opponency. 

--These interactions enable ORNs to do two things at once: They detect odors and regulate their own signals. 

 

Q: How do they do it?
A: Electrochemicals dance across the tiny space between neurons in a sensillum. Together, these diminutive detectors quickly calculate the proper amount and preferred effect of each odor before they send a “do” or “don’t” message. This saves the fly brain’s computing power which might otherwise get overwhelmed with a barrage of confusing scents.

Nature is as poor a substitute for a Creator as a puddle of pigment is for a painter. An unbiased view clears the way to attribute the “marvel” of these “simple yet elegant” dual-function fruit fly nerve cells to the work of a Person with the power to choose." ICR

Unrestrained Human Nature: ALWAYS THE SAME

"Let us compare the two pictures drawn by Paul, the one of the iniquity of ancient heathenism:

Romans 1
²⁸ And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave

them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
²⁹ Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
³⁰ Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
³¹ Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
³² Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

And the other of the iniquity of the last days, even among those who have “a form of godliness”:

2 Timothy 3
¹ This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

² For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
³ Without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
⁴ Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
⁵ Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
⁶ For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
⁷ Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
⁸ Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

We can see that these two pictures are exactly alike. Human nature, unrestrained, is the same in all ages. 

Whether in the days of Christ, 

or two thousand years before, 

or two thousand years after; 

whether manifested in the inhabitants of Canaan, 

or in the inhabitants of the United States, 

it is always the same.

 

It is for this very reason that the Bible fits men, wherever on the earth it may find them. It is a book not for one tribe only, nor for one class, nor for one nation, but for the human race. And it is the only book in the world that is." A.T. Jones

Creation Moment 2/24/2022 - The Theme of DESIGN

Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. 

1 Peter 4:19

"........ the Design theme answers the question where the beauty and

amazing complexity of information in living creatures came from. 

The only possible answer is that it came from our awesome intelligent designer, the Creator of heaven and earth and all that are in them."

CEH

We sometimes forget "the end is not yet" part

"In part of His response to the disciples’ question, “Tell us . . . what
will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3), Jesus responded, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6). 

 

Because of Jesus’ words in this passage, whenever there is an explosion of conflict many people begin to wonder if the new war is a sign of the end times. 

----If only people would read the rest of Matthew 24:6—“. . . See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet” (emphasis added).

Understanding Jesus’ statement about “wars and rumors of wars” to mean that warfare is a sign of the end times is the exact opposite of what He intended. 

Jesus was instructing us to not allow wars or rumors of wars to alarm or concern us, because “the end is not yet.” Similarly, Jesus spoke of false Christs (Matthew 24:5), famines, and earthquakes (Matthew 24:7), warning that “all these are the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:8).

Sadly, all of the things Jesus pointed to as not necessarily being signs of the end times are precisely the things most people look at as signs of the end times. 

Now, this is not to say that wars and rumors of wars are completely unrelated to the end times. When the Bible speaks of the end times, it describes some intense warfare. But Jesus’ point seems to be that there always has been war, and, until He establishes peace there will always be war. Therefore, wars and rumors of war are not reliable predictors for the end times.

Whether it is a civil war in Africa, strife between Israel and its neighbors, or the war on terror, no conflict today is necessarily a sign that the end times are imminent. No matter what wars and rumors of war are going on around us, our mission is the same, and it just so happens that the mission is what Jesus says is a reliable predictor of the end times, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14, emphasis added)."

MichaelSavage.com

The "Saying" of 1 Timothy 1

 1 Timothy 1 

¹⁵ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

"THIS was at that time “a saying.” What is a “saying”?—Here is the definition of the word:

“A saying is impersonal, current among the common people, deriving its authority from its manifest truth or good sense.”

Perhaps you have not yet found out that you are the chief of sinners.

If so, you are missing a most blessed part of Christian experience.

And so once more this will be a saying. It will be once more, as at the first, the faithful saying that God appointed it to be. For it is as true today as ever it was in the world that:

1 Timothy 1
¹⁵ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." A.T. Jones

Creation Moment 2/23/2022 - The Missing "Follow Up" Question

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.... Hebrews 1:2

 

"Disruption of Saturn’s ring particles by thermal stress (Hirata et al., Icarus 19 Feb 2022). Knowing that thermal stress is at work on our moon to disrupt boulders and grind them down to dust, these researchers considered whether that happens in Saturn’s rings.

Spacecraft and ground-based observations show that the

main rings of Saturn lack particles larger than 10 m. Tidal or collisional destruction of satellites/comets have been proposed as the origin of the main rings; however, Saturn’s tide alone cannot grind km-sized fragments into submeter-sized particles because of the high mechanical strength of water ice and rock. The question arises as to why such large particles are not left in the current ring. It is known that thermal stress induced by diurnal and seasonal temperature variations can cause weathering and fragmentation of boulders and contribute to dust and regolith production on the Moon and terrestrial planets, and then such thermal stress can break particles larger than a critical radius while cannot smaller than the critical radius. In this study, we examined the role of thermal stress acting on Saturn’s ring particles. We found that thermal stress can grind porous ring particles larger than 10–20 m, which explains the lack of particles larger than 10 m in Saturn’s ring. Also, fragmentation by thermal stress can be adoptable for the ε rings of Uranus.

The only solar system bodies with large boulders, they say further, are found in “geologically active provinces such as the tiger stripes of Enceladus, where boulders are supplied by recent geological activity.” 

---A follow-up question should be why bodies as small as Enceladus should be active after 4.5 billion Darwin Years. 

That question was not asked." CEH

Beneath the Bulwark of "He Hath Said"

 He hath said. Hebrews 13:5

 

"IF we can only grasp these words by faith, we have an all-

conquering weapon in our hand. 

Q: What doubt will not be slain by this two-edged sword? 

Q: What fear is there which shall not fall smitten with a deadly wound before this arrow from the bow of God's covenant? 

 

Q: Will not the distresses of life and the pangs of death; 

will not the corruptions within, and the snares without; 

will not the trials from above, and the temptations from beneath, all seem but light afflictions, when we can hide ourselves beneath the bulwark of "He hath said"? 

A: Yes;.... And this may teach us the extreme value of searching the Scriptures. There may be a promise in the Word which would exactly fit your case, but you may not know of it, and therefore you miss its comfort. 

 

---You are like prisoners in a dungeon, and there may be one key in the bunch which would unlock the door, and you might be free; but if you will not look for it, you may remain a prisoner still, though liberty is so near at hand. 

---There may be a potent medicine in the great pharmacopoeia of Scripture, and you may yet continue sick unless you will examine and search the Scriptures to discover what "He hath said."

Charles Spurgeon

Trask Tragedy

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God...

 Exodus 20:10

"John Trask acknowledged the obligation of the true Sabbath, and employed voice and pen in its defense. 

 

He was soon called to account by the persecuting power of the Church of England. He declared the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a guide for religious faith, and maintained that civil authorities should not control the conscience in matters which concern salvation.

 

He was brought for trial before the infamous tribunal of the Star Chamber, where a long discussion was held respecting the Sabbath. Trask would not depart from the injunctions and commandments of God to obey the commandments of men. 

 

He was therefore condemned, and sentenced to be set upon the
pillory, and thence to be publicly whipped to the fleet, there to remain a prisoner. 

This cruel sentence was executed, and after a time his spirit was broken. 

He endured his sufferings in the prison for one year, and then recanted. 

Oh that he had suffered on, 

and won a martyr’s crown!"

E.G.W.

Creation Moment 2/22/2022 - "Common Misuse"

I have seen the foolish taking root... Job 5:3

 

".. another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea

that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness... Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling... it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.... "

Austin L. Hughes, The New Atlantis, Fall 2012

3 Points on that "Eternal Fire"

"We will briefly review the points:

1. Those only who accept Christ receive eternal life; all others

perish. John 3:16. That is, they will be blotted from existence. 

This is the penalty which was threatened in the beginning, before sin entered, and which is now simply delayed a little in order to allow mankind an opportunity to repent. Thus it is that “the long suffering of our Lord is salvation.” 2 Peter 3:15.
 

2. The agent by which the death penalty is to be executed,is fire—everlasting fire.

We saw that it was eternal fire that destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,and that by means of “unquenchable fire” the walls and palaces of Jerusalem were devoured.  

We learned also that the “eternal fire” that fell upon the cities of the plain turned them to ashes, and that this is what is always accomplished when fire is unquenchable. 

The wicked being likened to chaff, and stubble, it does not tax our imagination in the least to understand how, when cast into unquenchable fire, they will be burned up, and be ashes.
 

3. We have also seen that the wicked go into “everlasting
punishment.”  

But this punishment is death, so that Matthew 25:46 simply teaches that from the death which the finally impenitent suffer, from which there will be no resurrection."

E.J. Waggoner

Creation Moment 2/21/2022 - Smashing Pluto to get Long Age Chronology of Planet

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God...

Hebrews 11:3

 

Planetary scientists pull out their tried-and-true 

all-purpose explanation: impacts.

 

"Pluto is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old, circling the sun in a highly inclined orbit far from other gravitational influences. 

---Mission scientists for New Horizons expected to see a crater-saturated ice ball when the spacecraft flew by in 2015. 

---Instead, they got an active body with nitrogen glaciers, tectonic activity and a thin atmosphere. Now they even think it has a liquid ocean under its surface. 

---Quick! Bring in the Theory Fixers! In come the asteroids. They added some heat and scarred Pluto’s face to make it look older.

The heart-shaped basin named Sputnik Planitia is a particular area of concern, because much of the activity occurs there. It has very few craters.  

Q: If it was gouged out by an impact, how did it get filled in with nitrogen ice? How long did that take?

Clues to Pluto’s History Lie in Its Faults (EOS Science News from the AGU). A news item from the American Geophysical Union summarizes research by the Lunar and Planetary Institute. They decided that the “cold Pluto” theory doesn’t explain the young features, so a “hot Pluto” model is needed— with a little help from (Incoming rock alert!… WHAM!!) impactors.

This liquid water ocean has huge implications for how

Pluto formed and retained enough heat to melt all that ice. In the years since the New Horizons flyby, two general formation hypotheses have emerged. The first starts with a “cold” Pluto, which involves Pluto forming over millions of years by the slow accretion of cold objects. This version of Pluto eventually would have coalesced enough material that radiative heating from the inside would melt the subsurface ocean. The other hypothesis involves a “warm” or “hot” Pluto, in which Pluto formed over a shorter time period in violent collisions that heated its interior, formed the ocean, and eventually cooled the planet into the majority ice ball we know today.

If Pluto had formed by slow accretion (the old standard theory), its only heat source would have been radiogenic heat. All the short-period radionuclides should have burned out long ago. Another source of heat out in the solar system’s icebox zone comes from the kinetic energy of impacts."

Let’s see if they can keep Pluto billions of years old. Feel the surprise at Pluto’s revelation during the flyby:

Following its flyby of the Pluto-Charon system in 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft returned high quality images that revealed complex worlds with an unexpectedly diverse range of terrains and a correspondingly diverse range of resurfacing mechanisms, including broad tectonic systems, suggestions of cryovolcanic activity, and even ongoing surface renewal in the form of the convecting and glacially flowing nitrogen ice deposits of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto (Moore et al., 2016; Stern et al., 2015).

Such processes should not be going on so far away from the sun. Have they been steady for billions of years?

Global climate modeling of Pluto (Bertrand et al., 2018) indicates that the massive scale of the Sputnik basin would cause it to be filled by nitrogen ice migrating into it from across Pluto after its excavation over a timescale of some tens of millions of years (less than 1% of Pluto’s total age). If the basin is filled so rapidly, it follows that the formation of the Sputnik basin and its subsequent infilling (i.e., loading) are essentially coincidental to within some tens of millions of years.

Notice the assumption: “1% of Pluto’s total age.” That embeds the 4.5-billion-year age assumption into the discussion. They take it as undisputed fact, but if the impact occurred near the beginning of Pluto’s old-age story, and if Sputnik Planitia filled in within tens of millions of years (several 450ths of the assumed age), why is activity still going on today?" CEH