Creation Moment 12/27/2021 - Billions of Rogue Planets in the Milky Way?

 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God... Hebrews 11:3

"Astronomers may have found at least 70—and possibly as many as 170—new free-floating exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system that are not tethered to any stars. 

They identified as many as 3,455 total exoplanet candidates—70 to 170 of which are Jupiter-size objects and likely true rogue exoplanets. They are all floating in space about 420 light years away, in a region of the Milky Way known as the Upper Scorpius OB stellar association.

The new findings suggest there are many more of these hidden, rogue planets floating in the dark to discover, Hervé Bouy, an astronomer said in a statement. “There could be several billions of these free-floating giant planets roaming freely in the Milky Way without a host star.”

PopularScience

Horrid Theory of Eternal Torment

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies.... 2 Peter 2:1

 

"On the supposition that eternal torture is to be inflicted as the penalty for a life of sin in this world, were man asked if God’s conduct in this respect was just, his own innate sense of justice, not yet wholly obliterated by the fall, would prompt him to a universal and determined, No! 

 

The framers of different religious systems have felt this, and seem to have searched sharply for some avenue of escape from the fearful wrong of this horrid theory. 

So Plato had his Acherusian lake from which at least some of the

wretched sufferers in Tartarus, after a purgative process, might issue forth again to the upper air. 

Augustine, following Plato in his notion of an abode of unending pain for some, had also his purgatory, from whence others might find a road to heaven. Rome has only a purgatory, the fires of a finite period, for the millions within her communion. 

Origen conceived of a purgatory wider than Plato’s, Augustine’s, or Rome’s, from which all should at length be restored to the favor of God.

 
The churches of the Reformation have generally accepted of Augustine’s hell, but denied his purgatory. 

In the Protestant denominations, therefore, we have this doctrine in its most horrid aspects.  

 

Albert Barnes, the well-known preacher and commentator, speaks on the same point as follows:
“I confess, when I look upon a world of sinners and of sufferers, upon death-beds and graveyards, upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer forever. When I see my friends, my parents, my family, my people, my fellow citizens; when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger. And when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned ; and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark, to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.”

 
Such is the effect of the doctrine of eternal misery upon some, according to the confession of its own advocates.

 

The root and trunk of all this is the taken for granted

 position that the soul is immortal. 

But search through your Bible, and see if you find it so. 

 

See if you will not rather be prepared to exclaim with the eminent commentator, Olshausen, that, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible. 

--See if you can find the death that never dies, and never-dying soul. 

--If not, we ask you to reject the idea at once as a most dangerous and destructive error. 

 

Men are thus rejecting it. 

The leaven is working in the public mind. 

Men are growing suspicious of the truth of a declaration, 

--first uttered by a not over truthful character in Eden, 

--perpetuated thence through heathenism, 

--and at last, through the medium of the mother of harlots,

--disseminated through all the veins and channels of orthodoxy.  

 

The very better emotion of their nature revolts at the idea, and they will not accept it. They cannot believe that God is thus cruel, tyrannical, revengeful, implacable, the personification, in short, of every trait of character which, when seen in men here, we consider unmistakable marks of debasement and degradation. 

 

And believing the Bible and Christianity to be identified with such teaching as this, with equal promptness they too are rejected and cast away.

Can it, then, be wondered at that we should be solicitous to disabuse the minds of the people in this respect? 

Shall we not have a zeal for the Lord, and be untiring in our efforts to wipe off from the book and character of God the aspersions which are by this doctrine cast upon them?" 

Uriah Smith

Flickering Embers still Burn from our Pagan Past

Your fathers, where are they? Zechariah 1:5

*This post is not meant to be anti-Christmas Tree and it's lights but rather to illustrate that the paganism of our ancestors echoes down through the ages---no matter how Christianized--or atheistic we become.

"The idea of putting wax candles on an evergreen was inspired by the
pagan tradition of celebrating the winter solstice with bonfires on Dec. 21. 

These bonfires on the darkest day of the year were intended to recall the sun and show her the way home. 

The lit Christmas tree was essentially a domesticated version of these bonfires." TheConversation

Creation Moment 12/26/2021 - Fingerprints

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.... Psalm 139:14

"Fingerprints Enhance Our Sense of Touch (Neuroscience News, March 15, 2021). Fingerprints usually come up in the context of forensics: identifying criminals by the unique patterns of ridges on their fingertips. But what do they do for us?

The hand contains tens of thousands of sensory neurons.

Each neuron tunes in to a small surface area on the skin — a receptive field — and detects touch, vibration, pressure, and other tactile stimuli. The human hand possesses a refined sense of touch, but the exact sensitivity of a single sensory neuron has not been studied before.

And just how sensitive is a single sensory neuron? Dr. Eva Jarocka et al. “measured the electrical activity of the sensory neurons in human fingertips when they stimulated with raised dots swept over the skin.” 

They refined the data and mapped it onto images of a fingerprint. The result? “Human Touch Receptors Are Sensitive to Spatial Details on the Scale of Single Fingerprint Ridges.” This was the title of their paper in the Journal of Neuroscience, published 21 April 21.

Look at those ridges right now on a finger, using a magnifier if you have one. That’s amazingly precise. But why do we have fingerprint ridges?

Taken together, these results suggest that the internal
sensitivity topography of a neuron’s receptive field was largely conserved across scanning directions but could be influenced by direction-dependent shear deformations of the skin surface. In addition, most neurons retain the distinctiveness of the features of their receptive fields with reference to other neurons’ fields.

---This appears to mean that a fingertip, with its ridges and valleys, enhances the responsiveness of its underlying neurons. 

Each neuron remembers its own response. 

The brain puts together a map of the surface based on thousands of inputs—a very advanced method of maximizing data input from a field, similar to radar and other scanning algorithms." CEH

Last SABBATH of 2021

 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

ARCHAEOLOGY: Evidence of that "Rain"

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. Genesis 7:12

"A huge sauropod dinosaur femur (thigh bone) from a known dinosaur ‘graveyard’ in Charente, France was recently revealed. At 6.5 ft. long and weighing 1/2 ton, such a ‘big’ dino find is unusual for Europe, although this area has to date produced thousands of bones of mostly dinosaurs (of various types) and other animals, including crocodiles and turtles.

The excellent preservation of this femur was a surprise. Ronan Allain of the National History Museum of Paris said, “We can see the insertions of muscles and tendons, and scars” which “is rare for big pieces which tend to collapse in on themselves and fragment”.

---In any case it's unlikely to see such exquisite detail if it was gradually covered over long periods of time, as the typical uniformitarian story suggests.

Moreover, the bone was “in a thick layer of clay”. Since clay initially has significant water content, the femur’s good state is all the more astonishing. Water will accelerate decay, even though fossilization by permineralization requires water at first, to carry the dissolved minerals. Compression of the clay by thick layers of overlying sediment would have helped squeeze out the excess water, but that would only solve the decomposition problem if the layers were not laid down over vast ages, i.e. it had to happen before the bone decomposed.

All in all, quick burial by mineral-rich, sediment-laden Floodwaters, with ongoing sedimentation over only days or weeks rapidly depositing more layers on top, makes much more sense of this bone and the fossil ‘graveyard’ in which it was found." CMI

Manger: Symbol Of The Treaty Signed

 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 

Luke 2:13,14

"That manger was the place where the treaty was signed, 

---whereby warfare should be stopped between man’s conscience and himself, man’s conscience and his God. 

It was then, that day, the trumpet blew—for God is now at peace with man, and man at peace with God.

Do you not feel, my brethren, that the gospel of God is peace to man?

Q: Where else can peace be found but in the message of Jesus?”

Charles Spurgeon

Fables of St. Augustine for December 25

Neither give heed to fables .... 1 Timothy1:4

Fables of St. Augustine for December 25

"According to Catholic tradition, the rejoicing of Christ’s coming lasts considerably longer than one great day. Rather, it stretches from the Christmas vigil Mass until the Feast of the Epiphany, sometimes called Three Kings’ Day.

Q: Why did the Church choose to celebrate Christ’s birth on

December 25? 

A: The most direct answer is that according to the Roman calendar, this day marked the winter solstice. 

Saint Augustine explained the significance of this day in remembering Christ’s coming, writing, “on the day which is the shortest in our earthly reckoning and from which subsequent days begin to increase in length. He, therefore, who bent low and lifted us up chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to increase.” CatholicMedia

Christmas Message - Our SHEPHARD has come

 "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 'Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!'" (Luke 2:13-14).

Shepherds were looked down on in Bethlehem society.  People didn’t

exactly rub elbows with them at social events.  But God’s message was clear—this hope was for ALL people, including shepherds! 

Ezekiel 34:15, “'I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,' says the Lord God”, is just one of many passages in the Old Testament referring to Christ as our Shepherd.  Christ came to bestow peace, but also to lead us." CW

E.J. Waggoner's Thoughts on Christmas

"What Is Christmas?” 

Possibly ninety-nine out of every hundred people who give the

matter any thought at all, would answer that it is the anniversary of the birth of Christ. 

So general has this idea become, that many people regard Christmas as a sacred day...In the Catholic Church it is regarded as far more holy than Sunday.  

 

---As a matter of fact, nobody knows the month nor the day of the month on which Jesus of Nazareth was born. 

--The only place where we could hope to find any definite information on the subject, namely, the Bible, is utterly silent regarding the matter. 

---The fact that the Bible gives no sanction whatever to the celebration of the birth of Christ, not even mentioning when it occurred, is sufficient evidence that the Lord did not wish to have it celebrated. 

 

---There is only one thing that we can know with any certainty about the birth of Christ, and that is that it did not take place on the twenty-fifth of December, nor in the month of December. Read the record: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:8-11.  

Winter in Palestine is the season of rain. Snow falls, and there are sharp frosts. While it is a subtropical country, it is certain that in the winter season sheep are not kept in the field, and shepherds do not in winter, watch their flocks by night “all seated on the ground,” as the hymn has it. 

 

---No one thought of celebrating any day as the birthday of Christ until about three hundred years after His ascension. 

Dr. Schaff tells us that we first find Christmas in Rome, “in the time of the Bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words, ‘Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth festival of thy bridegroom.’ This passage implies that the festival was already existing, and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380; in Alexandria, where the feast of the Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430.”

 

When we recall the fact, stated by Mosheim, that in consequence of the introduction of pagan philosophy into the church, the heathen came into the church in great numbers, without thinking it necessary to materially change any of their former practices, we can understand how the opposition between the church and the world came to be softened by the general “conversion” of the heathen. 

 

As Dr. Schaff says, Christmas was adopted after the close of persecution, when abhorrence of everything heathen had ceased. 

Mosheim tells us that even in the second century, a large part of the Christian observances and institutions had the aspect of the pagan mysteries. This was because “the Christian bishops purposely multiplied sacred rites” for the purpose of conciliating the pagans. As illustrating the spirit of compromise he quotes the following from Gregory Nyssen’s life of Gregory Thaumaturgus: “When Gregory perceived that the ignorant and simple multitude persisted in their

idolatry, on account of the sensitive pleasures and delights it afforded, he allowed them in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, to indulge themselves, and give a loose to pleasure (i.e., as the thing itself, and both what precedes and follows, placed beyond all controversy, he allowed them at the sepulchres of the martyrs on their feast days, to dance, use sports, to indulge conviviality, and to do all things that the worshippers of idols were accustomed to do in their temples on their festival days), hoping that in process of time they would spontaneously come over to a more becoming and more correct manner of life.”-Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 2, part 2, chap. 4, section 2, note 3.

 

....says that “the heathen calendar still regulated the amusements of the people.” These amusements, be it remembered, where the festival days of the church; so that the “church year” is but little else than the old heathen round of festivals.

 

The existence of such festival days in the professed Protestant Church to-day, only shows how incomplete was the work of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. That was only a beginning, and much yet remains to be done; for when Christ appears the second time He will find a church as free from Paganism as it was when He left it.  

---The finishing of the work of the Reformation will not be brought about en masse, nor by any general or formal action, but by individuals taking the Bible alone as their guide, and daring to be counted peculiar for the sake of Christ. 

---Who will be among the number?" E.J. Waggoner

Reformers Divided on Christmas

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

LUTHER - Pro-Christmas

"In his sermon entitled ‘To Us a Child Is Born’ (preached on 25th December, 1531), Luther honed in upon the faith of the shepherds who, “in spite of what their five senses told them […] concluded: this

is the King, the Savior, the great joy of the people. There was nothing great in the hearts of those shepherds save for the words of the angel. In fact, they were so great that except for them the shepherds saw nothing else. They were filled with those words just like drunkards and they made them known without being in the slightest bit concerned about what the great lords in Jerusalem and the Sanhedrin would have to say. On the contrary, without an inkling of fear, they preached of the poor Christ”.

 

ZWINGLI - Anti-Christmas

"At the other end of the Evangelical spectrum was Ulrich Zwingli.
Zwingli got rid of every ecclesiastical festive day in Zurich. Given that Zwingli embraced the regulative principle of worship, that is, churches should only do that which is explicitly commanded in Scripture, he opposed any celebration which was not mentioned in the Bible."

 

CALVIN - Neutral

"Although Calvin accepted the regulative principle of Zwingli and not Luther’s normative principle, he believed that each local

congregation could decide how best to celebrate (or not celebrate) the festive season. In spite of the fact that some have asserted that Calvin was in the anti-Christmas camp, the Frenchman wrote two letters in January 1551 and March 1555 outlining his stance with respect to Christmas.

In the January 1551 letter, Calvin explained that the Geneva authorities had done away with festive days before he arrived in the city whilst openly confessing that he did –personally speaking- celebrate “the birth of Christ”. In the March 1551 letter, Calvin hit out at those who criticized certain churches which opted to commemorate the festive period. According to the Geneva Reformer, such questions were “matters of indifference”.

EvangelicalFocus

Creation Moment 12/25/2021 - DREAMS

 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.... Psalm 139:14

DREAMS - A Finely Structured System

"You dream for two hours every night, but for something so common, it’s a remarkably enigmatic process. 

 A.

Dreams tap memories stored in connections between brain cells, which the hippocampus tracks as they form. At night it directs neurons to replay recollections, facilitating long-term storage. That could be why reality seeps into our visions—but not why they tend to warp reality. 

B.

Our most vivid imaginings occur during the REM phase of sleep. Activity increases in brain regions that control movement and process optical inputs, like the visual and motor cortices, which likely create what we “see” and “do” in slumber. 

C.

The almond-shaped amygdala helps generate feelings like fear, anger, and anxiety. It and other emotional domains are more rowdy during REM sleep, which could explain why strong reactions happen frequently when we doze. We may rely on this process to dull the sting of difficult memories. 

D. 

Despite their disjointed nature, dreams still contain semirational thoughts, likely thanks to areas supporting conscious cognition. The anterior, or front, portion of the cingulate, a semicircle in the brain’s center, influences motivation and decision-making—and can switch on while we’re snoozing.  

E.

During REM, neuroscientists see suppression of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is critical for executive functions like directing attention, solving problems, and reasoning. This might help explain why we rarely realize we’re asleep, despite some outlandish scenarios." PocketWorthy

Q: Do you really think this Finely Tuned system---which includes switches---evolved randomly by time + chance over eons slowly with a little bit of hocus pocus of natural selection mixed in?

Health Note - N95

  Beloved,

I wish above all things that thou mayest...be in health...

3 John 1:2

 

As we've pointed out that study after study show that the cloth masks don't really work good (that's why politicians earlier this year told you to wear two---and they knew this the whole time--just see the hypocrite Fauci's emails). 

BUT there are masks that can do a much better job---the N95.

Here is a Link to order some Below

 https://shop.projectn95.org/all

"With another coronavirus variant racing across the U.S., .... it's seriously time to upgrade to an N95 or similar high-filtration respirator when you're in public indoor spaces. 

"Cloth masks are not going to cut it ...," says Linsey Marr, a researcher at Virginia Tech who studies how viruses transmit in the air.

Omicron is so much more transmissible than coronavirus variants that have come before it. It spreads at least three times faster than delta. 

 "It's very contagious," says Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "And the kind of encounter that you could have had with prior versions of the virus that would have left you uninfected, there's now a good chance you will get infected from it." 

Marr notes that preliminary data from scientists at the University of Hong Kong has shown that omicron multiplies 70 times faster inside human respiratory tract tissue than the delta variant does. That study also found that omicron reaches higher levels in respiratory tract tissue 48 hours after infection, compared with delta. "That would suggest to me that maybe it reaches higher levels and then we spew out more [virus particles] if we're infected," Marr says.

Given all this, you want a mask that means business when it comes to blocking viral particles. Unlike cloth masks, N95, KN95 and KF94 respirators are all made out of material with an electrostatic charge, which "actually pulls these particles in as they're floating around and prevents you from inhaling those particles," Karan notes. "And that really is key" — because if you don't inhale virus particles, they can't multiply in your respiratory tract.

The material in surgical masks also has an electrostatic charge. But surgical masks tend to fit loosely, and a snug fit — with no gaps around nose, cheeks or chin — "really makes a big difference," says Marr, who has studied mask efficacy.

KN95s tend to be a bit more comfortable than N95s, but counterfeits continue to be a problem. For safer shopping, check out a site like Project N95, a nonprofit that helps consumers find legitimate personal protective equipment. Or check the CDC's site for advice on how to spot a counterfeit and a list of trusted sources for surgical N95s." YourHealth

The "Far Off" Lesson of the Magi

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Matthew 2. 1, 2, 9, 10

"Lo! the kings of Seba and Sheba offer gifts— gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Wise men, the leaders of their peoples, bow down before Him, and pay homage to the Son of God. Wherever Christ is He is honorable. 

Let those of us who have long worshiped worship anew with yet lowlier reverence and intenser love. 

And God grant—  that some who are far off from Him spiritually, as the Magi were far off locally, may come to-day and ask, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have come to worship Him.” 

These wise men came naturally, traversing the desert; let us come spiritually, leaving our sins. 

These were guided by the sight of a star; let us be guided by faith in the divine Spirit, by the teaching of his word and all those blessed lights which the Lord uses to conduct men to himself." Charles Spurgeon

IN the NEWS - Copeland 's ‘Clergy Residence’

And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, 

and the birds of the air have nests; 

but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.  

Matthew 8:20

 

"Kenneth Copeland, the world’s wealthiest ‘pastor’, has come under

fire after a new investigation by Jay Root of of the Houston Chronicle reported that he is only paying around $3000 a year in property taxes on his mansion, rather than the $150,000 he would normally pay if he weren’t claiming it as a ‘clergy residence.’

Copeland, 85, an arch-heretic if there ever was one, is worth around $770 Million and holds the distinction of being the richest pastor in the world. (He claims he’s a billionaire) Aside from owning several private jets, he lives in an $7 million dollar, 18,000sqf mansion just outside of Fort Worth, Texas." Protestia

Creation Moment 12/24/2021 - Groaning {Entropy}

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Romans 8:22

 

"Generally speaking, entropy is the universal tendency for things to run down and fall apart.

Not surprisingly, the same tendency is at work in entire populations, generation after generation. We now know, thanks largely to the work of Dr John Sanford (renowned plant geneticist and genetic engineering pioneer from Cornell University), that the same gradual process of ‘running down’ is also operating in the human gene pool.

Called genetic entropy, it is driving humanity—and all higher organisms—to the point of extinction (barring divine intervention, of course). In fact, this process, which operates more rapidly in ‘higher’ organisms, means that the human species could only be several thousand years old; certainly not hundreds of thousands of years, or we would have already become extinct.

Simply put, genetic entropy means that the information content in the genome (all of our genes) is progressively declining, due to the accumulation of mutations, generation after generation." CMI

IN the NEWS - Groundwork Laid for "snitches"

And then shall many be offended, 

and shall betray one another, 

and shall hate one another.

Matthew 24:10

 

Of all the Groundwork that is being laid for the end times via COVID (NOT that this COVID stuff is the Mark of the Beast) this may be the most chilling. 

Think of this system being set up of paid SNITCHES ---- in the end times being turned on those who refuse to cooperate with the Mark of the Beast.....the end result of becoming Freedomless Democracies....

"The Austrian government is hiring people to “hunt down vaccine refusers,” according to a report published by Blick.

Yes, really.

The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly.

The city of Linz, which is home to 200,000 inhabitants, has a relatively low vaccination rate of 63 per cent.

In response, “Linz now wants to hire people who are supposed to hunt down vaccine refusers,” reports Swiss news outlet Blick.

The role of the inspectors will be to check on “whether those who do not get vaccinated really pay for it.”

The vaccine refusenik hunters will receive a wage of 2774 euros, which will be paid 14 times a year, making an annual income of 38,863 euros." NW