Friday, December 30, 2022

Puritan Corner - The White Stone

 “O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,
That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;
Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,
Their names without a record are forgot,
Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th' dust
Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust;
But he whose name is graved in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.”
by Anne Bradstreet  (1612-1672)
 To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
Revelation 2:17

Last Sabbath of 2022

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
 And on the seventh day God ended his work
which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day
 from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:
because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. 
Genesis 2:1-3

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God:
in it thou shalt not do any work,...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. 
Exodus 20:10,11

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on
the earth, .... Saying with a loud voice, Fear God,
and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and
worship him that made heaven,
and earth, and the sea,
and the fountains of waters. 
Revelation 14:6,7

Creation Moment 12/31/2022 - Darwinism Destroys Virtue in Darwinian Puppet Show

 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue.... 2 Peter 1:5
 
"There are two ways that Darwinism destroys virtue: by teaching that
  • Human beings are mere animals, and
  • Anything a human being does that seems good is really selfish.
The first premise reduces virtue to beast behavior. Darwinians teach
that the human race just got lucky in the past, when some accidental mutation gave us bigger brains. Brains in Darwinism are devoid of immaterial souls; they just work to increase “fitness”.
Fitness is not a virtue. It is anything that promotes survival of as many offspring as possible. That is selfish.
 
The second premise exalts beast behavior to virtue. Anything “good” or virtuous done by humans is also done by animals and even bacteria, they say. Fungi, worms, fish and birds can be “altruistic” and display virtues thought to be the sole purview of humanity. So really, righteousness in Darwinism is selfishness—vice in virtue’s clothing—even if it is promoted by apparently “altruistic” members of a group.
 
In extreme Darwinism, it’s the genes that are selfish. Darwinism thus reduces all organisms, even humans, to pawns in an evolutionary game, marionettes in a mindless puppet show." CEH

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Digging Deep into Proverbs 16:1

The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD.
Proverbs 16:1
"The preparations of the heart in man - The Hebrew is לאדם מערכי לב leadam maarchey leb, which is, literally, "To man are the dispositions of the heart; but from the Lord is the answer of the tongue.
 
Man proposes his wishes;
--but God answers as He thinks proper. 
The former is the free offspring of the heart of man; 
--the latter, the free volition of God. 
 
Man may think as he pleases, and ask as he lists; 
--but God will give, or not give, as He thinks proper. 
 
*This I believe to be the meaning of this shamefully tortured passage, so often vexed by critics, their doubts, and indecisions. God help them! for they seldom have the faculty of making any subject plainer!" Adam Clarke

Creation MOMENT 12/30/2O22 - The Huxley's Fruit

"Now we take a look at what Science Magazine said about the book on 1 December 2022. It isn’t pretty.
First, the opening remark by reviewer Piers J. Hale:
What is our evolutionary inheritance? What has our
natural history made us
, and how does this affect how we might live? Further, given our understanding of the mechanisms of inheritance, can we and should we direct our own evolution to ensure the betterment of humankind, both in body and in mind? Questions such as these are the intellectual offspring of the evolutionary view of life that Charles Darwin described in 1859. They also motivated the Huxleys, one of science’s most famed families and the subject of Alison Bashford’s new book, The Huxleys
.
Jesus taught his disciples that the fruit reveals the philosophy.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-19)
Out Comes the Bitter Fruit
Apparently Thomas Huxley tried to hold back his animal urges during the end of the Victorian era to not besmirch the reputation of Darwin. It was important that the materialist philosophy appear pleasingly proper to the intelligentsia of British society.
For the Huxleys, biology was always political, but it was
also full of contradictions. Thomas' hierarchical conceptions of race and sex were still liberal enough and typical enough of his time that he could oppose the more extreme racism of many of his contemporaries in British anthropology and advance sex-segregated science education for women seemingly without internal conflict….
Despite how Thomas embraced and advanced Darwin’s views on morality—which shocked critics by discarding the notion of divinely ordained principles of right and wrong—he strove to place himself and his family beyond reproach, adhering to the most conventional moral standards of his day. His son Leonard’s children, however, broke rather than pushed societal boundaries.
Julian Huxley, Darwin’s grandson, let loose with his animal instincts, repudiating his grandfather’s outdated prurience. And Aldous Huxley, known for his dystopian novel Brave New World depicting a drug-ridden, morality-free tyranny, did his part to tear down “divinely ordained principles of right and wrong.
Julian and his wife experimented with an open relationship;
he had a stream of lovers
, at least one of whom she shared, and wrote popular articles on birth control, sex, and the future of humanity for Playboy. Aldous, for his part, married “a Belgian bisexual beauty,” experimented with LSD, and sought to test the nature and limits of the mind. He wrote Brave New World in 1932 as Europe tumbled toward authoritarianism, an inclination he recognized in the enthusiasm his brother Julian shared with H. G. Wells for
technocratic state solutions to society’s problems.
Bad Fruit Causes Sickness
So did these lifestyles based on Darwinian principles help the Huxleys experience “the betterment of humankind, both in body and in mind?
Along with his surname, many of the Huxleys inherited the family patriarch’s tendency toward deep depression. Thomas Huxley wrestled with this darkness for years, and it almost overthrew him on more than one occasion: once at the loss of his firstborn, Noel, who succumbed to scarlet fever at 4 years old, and again at the death of his daughter Mady, who, struggling with her own mental demons, died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 27.
Julian, we learn, was in and out of institutions just as his career was taking off. Unable to function, he was forbidden by his doctors even to write, just as he was supposed to be taking up a professorship at Rice University. Noel Trevenen, Julian’s younger brother, was similarly troubled. Missing for days on the eve of the Great War, he was later found hanging from a tree in a secluded forest.
It’s noteworthy that reviewer Piers J. Hale says almost nothing positive about any of the Huxleys in his recounting of Bashford’s descriptions of shocking ill effects of Darwinian philosophy. One might think he would be alarmed enough to flee to Christianity to find healthy fruit and avoid a similar fate. But no; the universal acid in Darwin/Huxley fruit eats through all traditional beliefs, as apostate Christian-turned-Darwinist Daniel Dennett has said. Hale ends,
Readers follow the Huxleys as they contemplate nonhuman animals, primates, man, and mind in their intergenerational quest to understand the implications of evolution on what it means, or might mean, to be human.
That leaves a little room for readers of this review to ponder the implications of tasting of the forbidden fruit that tempts, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
Q: Is it any wonder why as evolutionary indoctrination rises in schools and culture, so does sexual perversion?" CEH

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Birth-Place of all Evil

 
......rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.
Luke 22:46
"It is well said that neglected prayer is the birth-place of all evil." 
Charles Spurgeon

Creation Moment 12/29/2022 - What you were Created to Do

"For us, Jesus saved His greatest creative skill and craftmanship! 
We were made in God’s image to reflect Him on Earth. 
We were made to love and do good. 
----
And we were made to talk with God."
I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face. 3 John 1:13,14
ICR

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

The Sabbath has Run Parallel  with that of the Human Race

"The Bible presents the Sabbath as the most ancient institution, excepting marriage, which man was to observe as a moral duty.
 
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3
Its existence has run parallel 
with that of the race." 
G.I. Butler

Creation Moment 12/28/2022 - Their all is nothing

 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight:..... Psalm 5:5

"There are people in the world who maintain that the hypothesis of
evolution has explained everything, 
--that the universe is self-contained 
--and self-sufficient, 
--that the law called Uniformity of Nature makes a controlling God unthinkable and impossible, 
--that there has never been a creation... 
--and that there is no purpose to anything... they are Materialists, the fighting force of a polite and hesitating scepticism.... they claim very emphatically, with gallant Prince Haeckel at their head, to know all. And their all is nothing."
Alfred Russell Wallace, New Thoughts on Evolution, 1910

Monday, December 26, 2022

Ramifications of the Fall impacted man & God

 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: Genesis 1:26
 
"God made Adam in His own image, but by sin he lost that image.
--Then he begat sons
and daughters, but he begat them in his image, not in God's. 
--And so we have descended in the line, but all after his image.
 
Christ came, of flesh, and in the flesh, born of a woman, made under the law; born of the Spirit, but in the flesh......it was the very flesh He designed to take; because you see, the problem was to help man out of the difficulty into which he had fallen, and man is a free moral agent. He must be helped as a free moral agent
Christ's work must be, 
not to destroy him,
 not to create a new race, 
but to re-create man, 
to restore in him the image of God."  
W.W. Prescott

IN the NEWS - Green Tithing hits EU

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Galatians 1:6 

**It's only a matter of time before this nonsense makes it across the pond to America and our politicians betray us to the extremism of the Green Religion and it's tithing schemes....and that of the Vatican surely salivating at the prospect of such a tithe as this in the name of mother earth....soon every knee will be forced to bend to the mother -- or of course be punished.
 
"The first “carbon credit” system in the world has been approved by the European Union’s parliament. 
The plan is in its initial stages of implementation, but as one Dutch
website put it: “Everyone in Europe will have to pay for carbon emissions.”
Citizens and companies will have to pay for the CO2 from the exhaust and the chimney,” the report added. 
With this deal we are drastically reducing emissions in Europe, but in a socially responsible way without harming European industry. The introduction of ETS  (Emissions Trading System) for transport and buildings is necessary to achieve our climate goals,” she added. 
Soon, every E.U. citizen will have to start paying for their carbon emissions in an effort to slash emissions by 55% by 2030."
 TP

Papal Notes - Dangers of Fratelli Tutti "Brotherhood"

"The Vatican has released Pope Francis’ message for the 56th World
Day of Peace
, which is scheduled to take place on January 1, 2023. In his message the pope highlights the need of fostering a global interdependence among the nations. He asserts that in order to advance the “universal values” of the “common good,” we “urgently need” to be connected to one another in solidarity and fraternity. 
The Pope’s statement was published by the Vatican Press Office and reads in part:
We can say that the greatest lesson we learned from
Covid-19 was the realization that we all need one another. That our greatest and yet most fragile treasure is our shared humanity as brothers and sisters, children of God. And that none of us can be saved alone. Consequently, we urgently need to join together in seeking and promoting the universal values that can guide the growth of this human fraternity
.” 

Let our hearts be changed by our experience of the crisis,
to let God, at this time in history, transform our customary criteria for viewing the world around us. We can no longer think exclusively of carving out space for our personal or national interests; instead, we must think in terms of the common good, recognizing that we belong to a greater community, and opening our minds and hearts to universal human fraternity. We cannot continue to focus simply on preserving ourselves; rather, the time has come for all of us to endeavour to heal our society and our planet, to lay the foundations for a more just and peaceful world, and to commit ourselves seriously to pursuing a good that is truly common.
This is Pope Francis’ vision for the future of our world: We are either all in this together, putting aside our individual interests, or we won’t be saved. This is the Vatican’s message for the nations. 
This is the heart of the Pope’s encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, which contends that only through our union in a single, global fraternity can we save the world:
We need to develop the awareness that nowadays we are either all saved together or no one is saved.” (Fratelli Tutti, #137).
The pope is working to create a world-wide brotherhood
 
The policies of Rome, which the Book of Revelation refers to as the
wine of Babylon,” will serve as the basis for this solidarity. In accordance with prophecy, a coalition of nations will be formed with the full support of the political, financial, religious, and secular authorities, with the papacy, of course, ruling supreme. This is the unholy alliance described in Bible prophecy that will restore tyranny during the Mark of the Beast crisis.

Those who are studying the prophetic Scriptures can see that there will be a brief period of peace just before the end, during which the great apostasy will impose its theological errors on the world. But that peace will not last long:
For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 
1 Thessalonians 5:2, 3."
AdventMessenger

Creation Moment 12/27/2022 - "if it ever happened at all" should be added....

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; 
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1:25 
 
"There’s a lot more variation in animal populations than what evolutionists thought. Investigation by an international research team and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) stated,
How fast evolution happens depends crucially on the abundance of its "fuel": how much genetic difference there is in the ability to survive and reproduce....[The research team has] now discovered that the raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than previously believed.
Throughout the article reference is made to ‘evolution’ when it would be more reasonable (and scientific) to use the term ‘variation.’
 
The casual reader would get the impression the examples given in the article was significant evolution in real time, “However, researchers have since discovered many examples of evolution occurring in just a few years.”
 
This is not real, vertical evolution (macroevolution), but only minor variation, which is compatible with creation science. How does macroevolution come about?
There is no agreement as to whether macroevolution results from the accumulation of small changes due to microevolution, or whether macroevolution is uncoupled from microevolution.
And since macroevolution has never been demonstrated, creationists would desire they add to the end of that statement, "if it ever happened at all." ICR

Sunday, December 25, 2022

IN the NEWS - Green Religion holy Jihad against Christendom

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel... Galatians 1:6

"Climate activists attempted to hijack a live televised Christmas service in the hopes of preaching their green agenda, but were foiled after the police intercepted their plans.
Members of the Last Generation radical climate action group attempted to hijack a televised Christmas service in Germany  seemingly in the hopes of commandeering the religious ceremony to spread their own green ideology on live television.
According to a press release by police in Stuttgart, a number of climate activists converged on the protestant Resurrection Church in Möhringen yesterday afternoon, in the hopes of disrupting a planned televised service which was due to take place there.
However, in a rather amusing twist, news that the Last Generation was planning to disrupt the service was seemingly obtained by authorities beforehand, and, as such, the planned live service was actually pre-recorded in the venue the day before.
As a result, when eight members of the radical group arrived at the church, they found the church closed....earlier this week, two activists from the group were able to “decapitate” a famous Christmas tree in Berlin using a saw and a mobile hydraulic platform." Breitbart

Good News - Bad News

"The greatest Gospel preacher in history, the Apostle Paul, firmly grounded his message in Genesis in the great Gospel/Resurrection chapter of 1 Corinthians 15:
the gospel I preached to you, which you received, … by which you are being saved … that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, …” (vv. 1–4)
To explain the good news, as well as the reason for the Gospel, Paul gave the bad news that we need saving because we are sinners:
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. … The last enemy to be destroyed is death. … Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. … The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. … Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (vv. 21–22, 26, 45–49).
So even when preaching the Gospel, Paul firmly grounded this in the events of Genesis 3—the very parts that many people urge us to omit! 
One has to explain the bad news before one can relate the Good News!" CMI

Creation Moment 12/26/2022 - The Takeaway Lesson of Human Flight

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Psalm 139:14

"Considering the complexities of flight, it is really no surprise that it
took over a century and a half after the development of the first machines in the Industrial Revolution to develop the first controlled flying machine. 
That it took so long, despite the application of much intelligence and engineering skill, is a powerful indication that flight could not have evolved by progressive selection of a series of random accidents." CMI
Q: How much more the indication that we are DESIGNED based upon the level of complexity of the human genome?

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Spurgeon on December 25

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14
 
We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December
Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give thanks to God for the gift of His dear Son.
Charles Spurgeon

Q: If YOU Remove what part of Christmas story do you Lose the Baby Jesus' Deity?

"Matthew relates the virgin conception to the Messiah being called God with us,” that is, deity (cf. Matthew 18:20, 28:20). 
 
It is foundational to the Christian faith that the Son of God was born of a woman to redeem us from our sin.
(But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Galatians 4:4–5).  
 
If we do not have the virgin conception
we deny the deity of Jesus 
and lose the truth of his redeeming death on the cross. 
 
The good news of Christmas is not simply about a baby being born, but about the eternal Son of God taking on humanity to save us from our sins (Matthew 1:21)." AIG

Creation Moment 12/25/2022 - This Baby had been Creator

"This baby born is the Creator
Genesis 1:1 informs us: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 
John’s Gospel reminds us of Genesis 1:1 by also starting with “In the beginning”—but John shows us the Word existed before the world’s creation. 
This Word was both with God as well as God himself
The creation of the universe isn’t mentioned until v. 3—and it was created by and for this Word.
This Word is also called God the Son.

In Hebrews 1:8–10, God (the Father) Himself says about the Son:
Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. … You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” So, God the Father is affirming that this Son is indeed God and Creator." CMI

Friday, December 23, 2022

The First Advent Was Not In Vain

"If men will turn to purposes of iniquity, and transgression, and sin, a life which is committed to them for a time, 
Q: how can the Lord commit to them this gift for eternity? 
 
If this life, which is not their own, they will devote simply as an instrument of unrighteousness unto sin, to rebellion, and unfaithfulness to Him who giveth it, 
Q: how shall He give to such immortal life–a life, which, being not subject to cessation, may properly be called their own? 
---To do so would be only to subvert His own authority and the principles of His government.  
 
The righteousness which is acceptable with God is the righteousness "which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Rom. 3:22, 23
 
"HE became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." Heb. 5:9
 
And "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16
 
Christ's coming to this world was not in vain."
A.T. Jones

Creation Moment 12/24/2022 - Narrative Gloss

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 1 Corinthians 1:19 

"I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century.... I
even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. 
Darwin’s theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss."
Dr. Philip Skell, NAS member, in The Scientist, August 29, 2005

Thursday, December 22, 2022

What did God actually say about the Covenant?

"Let the student note that the promises in the old covenant were really all on
the part of the people. God said, "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant [the ten commandments], then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. . . . and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation." (Ex.19:5,6). 
 
God did not say that 
He would make them such, 
but that they would be such a people if they obeyed His commandments. 
 
It could not be otherwise. 
The keeping of God's holy law would 
--constitute them a holy people
--and as such they would indeed be a peculiar treasure
--even as are all who are zealous of good works." 
A.T. Jones