Christ's Expectation of His Time on Earth

For I have given you an example.... John 13:15

 

"Jesus came to our world 

and lived as He expects His followers to live."

E.G.W.

Plant Growth after the Flood

And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. 

Genesis 8:11

"Once the continents emerged above water during the Recessional stage of the Flood, plants likely started growing on the newly exposed land.

Log and vegetation mats that contained seeds, spores, and plant debris including roots would have been left on the new land. These mats would also have floated on the oceans for many years after the Flood, dispersing animals and vegetation to many land areas.

 Another mechanism for fast plant growth has recently been discovered on a nearly sterile landscape in Brazil.

Quartzite, a metamorphic sandstone that is almost pure quartz, makes up the bedrock of a region called campos rupestres (Portuguese meaning ‘rocky grasslands’). The soil from this area is shallow and patchy with nearly undetectable levels of nutrients needed by plants. However, it sustains more than 5,000 plant species! Some of the plants even survive on bare patches of quartzite bedrock.

Quartzite is almost pure silica and has extremely little phosphorus, one of the main elements needed for plant growth. But despite the very low amount of phosphorus, roots from plants of the Velloziaceae family bore into the quartzite to obtain it. This is a never-before observed root specialization. The roots, which are very hairy, penetrate the quartzite at least 10 cm along former sandstone bedding planes. The roots give off acids that dissolve the rock.

We are increasingly discovering that many of the plants that

colonized the earth after the Flood had root specializations that would have aided growth in even nutrient-poor soil or bare rock. This reflects a creation usefully designed to bounce back from a calamity, e.g. the Genesis Flood. In the case of the Velloziaceae family, even bare quartzite rock produced growth. The combination of newly laid soil, scattered seeds that survived the Flood, log mats, and the unique ability of plants to squeak out nutrients from unlikely places all add up to a rapid recovery of the earth’s vegetation after the Flood." CMI

Spirit Mountain

".....Arizona, the Hualapai possess ancient rock carvings at Spirit

Mountain, long predating the arrival of Europeans, which recount the flood and depict eight survivors. 

 

They narrate the history thus: “Rains fell on the earth for 45 days. The rising waters wiped out all peoples with the lone exception of an old man atop Spirit Mountain.” 

 

Then a bird was sent out, and on its second flight it returned “with

grass in its beak to inform the man that the waters had receded.”

 

 This remarkably matches what Genesis says: “again he [Noah] sent the dove out from the ark. Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.” (Genesis 8:10-11)." AIG

Book Review: Echoes of Ararat

(short) Book Review: A book that may be of some interest.... 

(Review by ICR)

 

Echoes of Ararat

by Nick Liguori

Publisher : Master Books (2021) 300 pages

 

"In Echoes of Ararat, author Nick Liguori contends that oral traditions of the Flood—and the survival of the few inside the

floating Ark—are even more prevalent than previously thought, and they powerfully confirm the truth of the Genesis account. 

Nick Liguori is a civil engineer and an avocational researcher of biblical history and creation science. Nick has focused his research on the Book of Genesis and the Flood, including compiling a massive archive of references to the Flood from the histories and traditions of nations all over the world. Nick believes that a right view of God is critical to a right view of ourselves, and a right view of history is critical to a right view of God.

This unprecedented work carefully documents hundreds of native traditions of the Flood—as well as the Tower of Babel and the Garden of Eden—from the tribes of North and South America. Learn what the Cherokee, Lakota, Iroquois, Cheyenne, Inuit, Inca, Aztec, Guaraní, and countless other tribes claimed about the early history of the world. Liguori also shares many evidences for the historical reliability of Genesis, and shows that the Genesis Flood account is not dependent on the Epic of Gilgamesh or other Near-Eastern texts, as skeptics claim. Rather, its author Moses had access to ancient records passed down by the early Patriarchs, including Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, and even Noah himself."

 

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Genesis 7:24

Able to Read? Thank the Reformation....

And they that understand among the people shall instruct many... Daniel 11:33

 

This is what a secular source has to say....

"....we need to ask when and why did parents, communities, and governments come to see it as necessary for everyone to learn to read. Here, a puzzle about neuroscience and cognition turns into a

historical question.

Of course, writing systems are thousands of years old, found in ancient Sumer, China, and Egypt, but in most literate societies only a small fraction of people ever learned to read, rarely more than 10 percent. 

 

Q: So, when did people decide that everyone should learn to read? Maybe it came with the rapid economic growth of the 19th century? Or, surely, the intelligentsia of the 18-century Enlightenment, imbued with reason and rationality, figured it out?

A: No, it was a religious mutation in the 16th century. 

After bubbling up periodically in prior centuries, the belief that every person should read and interpret the Bible for themselves began to rapidly diffuse across Europe with the eruption of the Protestant Reformation, marked in 1517 by Martin Luther’s

delivery of his famous 95 theses. 

Protestants came to believe that both boys and girls had to study the Bible for themselves to better know their God. In the wake of the spread of Protestantism, the literacy rates in the newly reforming populations in Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands surged past more cosmopolitan places like Italy and France. Motivated by eternal salvation, parents and leaders made sure the children learned to read.

 

The Science Confirms the History

The sharpest test of this idea comes from work in economics, led by Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann. 

The historical record, including Luther’s own descriptions, suggest that within the German context, Protestantism diffused out from Luther’s base in Wittenberg (Saxony). 

---Using data on literacy and schooling rates in 19th-century Prussia, Becker and Woessmann first show that counties with more Protestants (relative to Catholics) had higher rates of both literacy and schooling. So, there’s a correlation. 

---Then, taking advantage of the historical diffusion from Wittenberg, they show that for every 100 kilometers traveled from Wittenberg, the percentage of Protestants in a county dropped by 10 percent. Then, with a little statistical razzle-dazzle, this patterning allows them to extract the slice of the variation in Protestantism that was, in a sense, caused by the Reformation’s ripples as they spread outward from the epicenter in Wittenberg. 

---Finally, they show that having more Protestants does indeed cause higher rates of literacy and schooling. All-Protestant counties had literacy rates nearly 20 percentage points higher than all-Catholic counties. 

---Subsequent work focusing on the Swiss Reformation, where the epicenters were Zurich and Geneva, reveals strikingly similar patterns.

---In Africa, regions with early Protestant missions at the beginning of the 20th century (now long gone) are associated with literacy rates that are about 16 percentage points higher, on average, than those associated with Catholic missions. In some analyses, Catholics have no impact on literacy at all unless they faced direct competition for souls from Protestant missions. 

---These impacts can also be found in early 20th-century China." Nautilus

IN the NEWS - Up to the U.P.

But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
Genesis 13:13

 

"A former priest pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually abusing teens

in the Upper Peninsula in the 1980s, the attorney general’s office said.

Gary Jacobs, 75, pleaded guilty to four counts of criminal sexual conduct in Ontonagon County and will serve at least eight years in prison before he’s eligible for parole, authorities said.

“This sentence will not erase the pain Mr. Jacobs inflicted on those who trusted him. But I hope our pursuit of justice can offer some sense of relief as their vulnerability led to this accountability,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

Jacobs is scheduled to make a similar plea deal in Dickinson County on May 3, Nessel said.

The Diocese of Marquette has said Jacobs was removed from ministry in 1988 and left the state. He was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he was charged in January 2020." AP

Creation Moment 4/25/2021 - Lesson from XCL1

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous... Psalm 139:14 NLT

Below is an article where darwinians think this evolved---BUT PAY CLOSE ATTENTION---what they actually find is a well DESIGNED SYSTEM that, even when it breaks down by losing information that pre-exists, has the ability to try and adjust to the breaks....and some of what is thought of as breaking down may actually be part of the DESIGN for a purpose and actually isn't malfunctioning....regardless they label this as "NOT AN ACCIDENT".

"Classically, a protein is imagined as a chain of amino acids that folds into a single stable configuration... But in the last few years, biophysicists have learned how numerous and extraordinary the exceptions to that rule are—including some two-faced proteins that can refold as needed in an instant.

First came the discovery of a special class of fold-switching proteins that have more than one stable conformation and can perform two different functions. 

The Wisconsin researchers decided to learn about metamorphic

proteins by looking at XCL1 more closely. Of the 46 chemokine proteins in humans, XCL1 is the only one that exhibits metamorphic switching. The others are stabilized by strong disulfide bonds that lock their protein molecules into a stable fold. But of XCL1, one of the disulfide bonds was lost, allowing a second conformation to emerge.

To reconstruct how that happened, the researchers used bioinformatics to infer the ancestral sequences for about 550 chemokines in today’s animals. Acacia Dishman, a graduate student, inserted the inferred DNA sequences into bacteria to resurrect the ancestral proteins. She then purified them, measured their biophysical properties and checked their structures with nuclear magnetic resonance for the distinctive “fingerprints” of the protein folds.

Q: But why would metamorphosis be better than having two specialized proteins? 

A: If a single protein can do double duty, it spares the cell from transcribing, translating and maintaining more than one gene. 

--But the more compelling advantage may be that the protein’s ability to transform may give the body a more dynamic way to control its defenses against bacteria.

 

Because XCL1 can adopt its two folded forms with equal probability, it can switch between them faster than once per second. 

---But changes in the temperature 

---or salt concentration 

---or the introduction of binding partners can change that equilibrium. 

For example, around microbial pathogens, more of the XCL1 proteins get stuck in the conformation that interacts with the microbial membranes, shifting the balance toward that fold. Elsewhere in the body, the protein can adopt the other fold more often and bind to the receptors on white blood cells to mobilize them. 

 

Dishman found that the oldest ancestor had a single stable fold, the

one common to all the chemokines. In proteins from a little later in the reconstructed sequence, she detected two fingerprints, one for the ancestral fold but also one for a newer fold, although the new fold remained rare. 

Surprisingly, just a little later in the sequence, proteins showed the opposite: They were mainly folded in the new conformation and only rarely in the ancestral conformation. Finally, in the modern XCL1, the two conformations were about equal, Dishman found.

 

The fact that the ancestors exhibited the two folds unevenly while the modern XCL1 exhibits both in equal proportion strongly suggests that the switching property “is not an accident or an artifact. It’s something that must have been beneficial and improved the fitness of the organism, ...,” said Brian Volkman." Nautilus

Burn Here The Fat Of Your Sacrifices

The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.

Leviticus 6:13

 

"KEEP the altar of private prayer burning. 

This is the very life of all piety. 

 

Burn here the fat of your sacrifices. 

Let your closet seasons be, if possible, regular, frequent, and undisturbed. 

Effectual prayer availeth much. 

 

Q: Is the fire of devotion burning dimly in our hearts? 

Q: Do the chariot wheels drag heavily? 

----If so, let us be alarmed at this sign of decay.....Let us set apart special seasons for extraordinary prayer.

----For if this fire should be smothered beneath the ashes of a worldly conformity, it will dim the fire on the family altar, and lessen our influence both in the Church and in the world.
 

The text will also apply to the altar of the heart. 

This is a golden altar indeed.

Charles Spurgeon

Romans 1 SERIES Page

 Romans 1 SERIES Page

For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Romans 1:20

 

Vs.1-7

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs1-7.html

Vs.8-12

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs8-12.html

Vs.13-17

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs13-17.html

Vs.18-20

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs18-20.html

Vs.21

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs21.html

Vs.22-23

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs22-23.html

Vs.24-25

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs24-25.html

Vs.26-27 

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs26-27.html

Vs.28-32

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-vs28-32.html

SUMMARY

http://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2021/04/romans-1-series-summary.html

Papal Notes - Correcting Francis' Earth Day Message

....and all the world wondered after the beast.

Revelation 13:3

 

"Pope Francis said in his Earth Day message on Thursday that the

planet was "at the brink" and humanity had to avoid "the path of self destruction."

He cited the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the effects of climate change and said nature could not continue to be disrespected, because it would "no longer forgive." U.S. News & World Report

 

First, the earth is on the brink---but not of an eco-apocalypse but rather an apocalypse brought about by the heart of man that will be exhibited in his wondering after the beast.

Second, we do have to avoid the path of self destruction--but not one due to the myth of man made climate change but rather one of of a deluded post-deluvian world that is self absorbed with hardness of hearts.

Third, it's not so-called nature that can't forgive--but rather the coming of the CLOSE OF PROBATION when God will no longer be able to Forgive....

Creation Moment 4/24/2021 - The Sabbath a Reminder of......

 "And "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 20:11).

 

The Sabbath, therefore, is given us, to remind us of the power of God's Word,---Christ healed on the Sabbath day.....As we rest from our own work on the seventh day 

we signify our knowledge and acceptance of

 the Word that upholds the universe, 

and on which we can securely rest."  

E.J. Waggoner

Romans 1 SERIES: SUMMARY

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his
eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20, NIV

 

 "The whole world stands condemned before the great moral standard of righteousness.

 

The beautiful things of nature reveal His character and His power as Creator.

 

Nature is not God, nor was it ever God. 

The voice of nature testifies of God, 

but nature is not God. 

As His created work, it simply bears a testimony to God's power. 

Deity is the author of nature.

 

The most difficult and humiliating lesson that man has to learn is his own inefficiency in depending upon human wisdom, and the sure

failure of his own efforts to read nature correctly. 

 

---Sin has obscured his vision, and of himself he cannot interpret nature without placing it above God. He cannot discern in it God.

 

The righteousness of Christ is revealed from faith to faith; that is, from your present faith to an increased understanding of that faith which works by love and purifies the soul."

E.G.W.

Waggoner's take on the Crusades

 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: Ecclesiastes 1:14

"Out of the millions who undertook the desperate journey to Palestine, men, women, and children, but a few thousand returned,

          strewing pestilence, plague, and leprosy 

along their homeward way—bringing everywhere destruction alike upon themselves, their foes, and their friends. 

 

The few survivors from such a terrible school must necessarily have learned something by their experiences. 

---The barbarian churl and semi-civilized knight brought back to hut and castle a bitterly earned knowledge of men and the world. 

 

This, by the kindness of an over-ruling providence, has since proved profitable, but at what a cost was this knowledge gained!

 

The plain truth about the Crusades is that they, and all that they stand

for, are no more worthy of celebration than 

---the slaughter and persecutions of the Inquisition, 

---or the cruelties of the religious wars of Mohammed, 

---or the massacres of Armenians in Turkey today. 

 

Although masquerading under different names, they are all the same spirit."

E.J. Waggoner

Creation Moment 4/23/2021 - Darwinian Tweakers

 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,... Romans 1:22

"One of the Darwin Party’s standard sub-myths is the story of five mass extinctions in Earth history, the Permian extinction being the largest. This team notices problems with the story, so they decide to take a more “nuanced approach” to it.

Finally, the changing narrative of PTT extinctions in the Karoo emphasizes that a more nuanced approach to the end-Permian mass extinction is needed that accounts for the idiosyncrasies of the event in different geographical areas. Only by recognizing the specific details of the extinction in different places can the search for generalizations be successful.

They investigate two exposures of a slope in South Africa called the Karoo Basin – a much larger feature than the two sample outcrops they look at. 

Assuming the geological time scale, 

---they agree together that the exposures represent 4 million years of

evolution. 

---They divide up the slopes into 13 imaginary time intervals of 300,000 years each, 

---and count fossils within each time “bin” they have imagined. 

Then come to an unexpected conclusion that land creatures went extinct ten times slower than sea creatures in the great Permian Extinction Event. Work all done, they publish their findings in PNAS, a major US science journal.

 

Q: How much did they really come to “know” about this deposit? 

A: One way to measure their knowledge is to count the instances of the word “likely” in the paper. It appears 8 times among the technical Jargonwocky:

1/ Large outpourings from Siberian Trap volcanism are the likely trigger of calamitous climatic changes, including a runaway greenhouse effect and ocean acidification, which had profound consequences for life on land and in the oceans. [What? Before SUVs?]

2/ Extinction dynamics likely reflect the disappearance of theriodonts …, pareiasaurs …, cynodonts …, and dicynodont species.

3/ Our data show species-level evenness to be relatively stable throughout the Cistecephalus and Daptocephalus assemblage zones and across the main extinction acme close to the Daptocephalus–Lystrosaurus declivis Assemblage Zone boundary, likely because of the retention of some extinction acme-crossing species (Lystrosaurus curvatus, Lystrosaurus maccaigi, Moschorhinus, Promoschorhynchus) alongside the appearance of new species in the inferred recovery phase.

4/ The substantial evidence for significant climatic changes related to global warming beginning at the end of the Permian period globally likely had disastrous effects on local conditions in the Karoo. These effects were possibly related to aridity and also increased climatic variability.

5/ Nevertheless, it is very likely that fluctuating climates associated with the end-Permian mass extinction played a significant role in steadily altering the composition and structure of tetrapod communities in the uppermost DAZ, eventually causing an ecosystem collapse marked by the unstable, short-lived communities observed in the lower Lystrosaurus declivis Assemblage Zone of South Africa’s Karoo Basin.

6/ Therefore, the success of Lystrosaurus and the likely reason for its cosmopolitan distribution was not caused strictly by the ecological aftermath of the PTT or Early Triassic environments but instead had its roots in the Permian.

7/ The rise of the disaster taxon Lystrosaurus well before the Permian–Triassic boundary indicates that its success did not stem solely from an ability to survive postextinction conditions. Instead, it likely had preexisting adaptations or ecological and evolutionary versatility that allowed it to flourish under the conditions that caused widespread and sustained extinctions among other taxa.

8/ This period of instability was likely key to breaking the incumbency of previously dominant synapsid clades, paving the way for the rise of archosaurs and their relatives as a more complete recovery was achieved later in the Triassic.

Assuming Oneself into Cluelessness

Before starting their working vacation in South Africa, the team had already assumed evolution and vast ages. 

---They assumed the evolutionary extinction sub-myth about the Permian Extinction. 

---They divided up the deposit according to these time assumptions. ---They assumed the Karoo Basin collected bones for 4 million Darwin Years. 

 

---The entire analysis and conclusion is based on these assumptions. Q: But what if they were not true? 

Q: What if the Karoo Basin formed rapidly, like in a catastrophic flood that buried all these animals in a single event? 

Q: What if evolution had nothing to do with the fossils? 

A: Then what they “know” is all bluffing. 

 

They were dividing up fossils into imaginary time intervals and assuming evolutionary lines between animals. It could be totally fake, like a house of cards resting on the word “likely.” 

They knew the Permian myth has its “idiosyncrasies” (i.e., anomalies against expectations), so they tweaked the narrative to mold their web of belief around it. 

 

Q: And what if their two sampling sites are not characteristic of the rest of the vast Karoo Basin?" CEH

Romans 1 SERIES: Vs.28-32

 Commentary of Charles Spurgeon, Adam Clarke & Matthew Henry

 

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; 

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 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.

Vs.28-32

 

Almost every trace of original righteousness had been obliterated.

 

---Were man left to the power and influence of his fallen nature he would be, in all places of his dispersion on the earth, what the apostle describes in the 29th, 30th, and 31st verses of this chapter.

 

The proofs of God's eternal power and providence, so manifest in the creation and preservation of the universe, were wholly disregarded.

 

They did not like to retain God - It would, perhaps, be more literal to translate ουκ εδοκιμασαν, They Did Not Search to retain God in

their knowledge. They did not examine the evidences before them ( Romans 1:19, Romans 1:20;) of his being and attributes; therefore God gave them over to a Reprobate mind, εις αδοκιμον νουν, to an Unsearching or undiscerning mind; for it is the same word in both places. They did not reflect on the proofs they had of the Divine nature, and God abandoned them to the operations of a mind incapable of reflection. 

 

First, Sins against the first table: Haters of God.

Secondly, Sins against the second table. 

These are especially mentioned, because in these things they had a clearer light. In general here is a charge of unrighteousness. This is put first, for every sin is unrighteousness; it is withholding that which is due, perverting that which is right; it is especially put for second-table sins, doing as we would not be done by. 

Against the fifth commandment: Disobedient to parents, and without natural affection—astorgous, that is parents unkind and cruel to their children. Thus, when duty fails on one side, it commonly fails on the other.

Against the sixth commandment: Wickedness (doing mischief for mischief's sake), maliciousness, envy, murder, debate (eridos—contention), malignity, despiteful, implacable, unmerciful; all expressions of that hatred of our brother which is heart-murder. 

Against the seventh commandment: Fornication; he mentions no more, having spoken before of other uncleannesses. 

Against the eighth commandment: Unrighteousness, covetousness. 

Against the ninth commandment: Deceit, whisperers, back-biters, covenant-breakers, lying and slandering. 

Here are two generals not before mentioned—inventors of evil things, and without understanding; wise to do evil, and yet having no knowledge to do good. 

They knew that those who commit such things were worthy of death, eternal death; their own consciences could not but suggest this to them, and yet they ventured upon it. 

 

They not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that do them. Syneudokousi: they do not only commit sin, but they defend and justify it.

 

 Now lay all this together, and then say whether the Gentile world, lying under so much guilt and corruption, could be justified before God by any works of their own.