The 3 Classes on the Sabbath

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work,... Exodus 20:3

"WITH respect to the Sabbath, the religious world may be divided into three classes:— 

1. Those who retain the ancient seventh-day Sabbath. 

2. Those who observe the first-day Sabbath. 

3. Those who deny the existence of any Sabbath.

It is inevitable that controversy should exist between these parties.

Their first appeal is to the Bible, and this should decide the case; for it reveals man’s whole duty. But there is an appeal by the second party, and sometimes by the third, to another authority, the early fathers of the church, for the decision of the question. 

The controversy stands thus: The second and third parties agree with the first that God did anciently require the observance of the seventh day; but both deny the doctrine of the first, that He still requires men to hallow that day; the second asserting that He has changed the Sabbath to the first day of the week; and the third declaring that He has totally abolished the institution itself. 

---The first class plant themselves upon the plain letter of the law of God, and adduce those scriptures which teach the perpetuity and immutability of the moral law, and which show that the new covenant does not abrogate that law, but puts it into the heart of every Christian. 

---The second class attempt to prove the change of the Sabbath by quoting those texts which mention the first day of the week, and also those which are said to refer to it. The first day is, on such authority, called by this party the Christian Sabbath, and the fourth commandment is used by them to enforce this new Sabbath. 

---The third class adduce those texts which assert the dissolution of the old covenant; and those which teach the abolition of the ceremonial law with all its distinction of days, as new moons, feast days, and annual sabbaths; and also those texts which declare that men cannot be justified by that law which condemns sin; and from all these contend that the law and the Sabbath are both abolished. But the first class answer to the second that the texts which they bring forward do not meet the case, inasmuch as they say nothing respecting the change of the Sabbath; and that it is not honest to use the fourth commandment to enforce the observance of a day not therein commanded. 

And the third class assent to this answer as truthful and just. To the position of the third class, the first make this answer: That the old covenant was made between God and His people concerning his law; that it ceased because the people failed in its conditions, the keeping of the commandments; that the new covenant does not abrogate the law of God, but secures obedience to it by putting it into the heart of every Christian; that there are two systems of law, one being made up of typical and ceremonial precepts, and the other consisting of moral principles only; that those texts which speak of the abrogation.

The handwriting of ordinances and of the distinction in meats,

drinks, and days, pertain alone to this shadowy system, and never to the moral law which contains the Sabbath of the Lord; and that it is not the fault of the law, but of sinners, that they are condemned by it; and that justification being attained only by the sacrifice of Christ as a sin-offering, is in itself a most powerful attestation to the perpetuity, immutability, and perfection, of that law which reveals sin. And to this answer the second class heartily assent. But the second class have something further to say. 

*The Bible, indeed, fails to assert the change of the Sabbath, but these persons have something else to offer, in their estimation, equally as good as the Scriptures. The early fathers of the church, who conversed with the apostles, or who conversed with some who had conversed with them, and those who followed for several generations, are by this class presented as authority, and their testimony is used to establish the so-called Christian Sabbath on a firm basis. And this is what they assert respecting the fathers: That they distinctly teach the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, and that the first day is by divine authority the Christian Sabbath. 

*But the third class squarely deny this statement, and affirm that the fathers held the Sabbath as an institution made for the Jews when they came out of Egypt, and that Christ abolished it at his death. They also assert that the fathers held the first day, not as a Sabbath in which men must not labor lest they break a divine precept, but as an ecclesiastical institution, which they called the Lord’s day, and which was the proper day for religious assemblies because custom and tradition thus concurred. 

And so the third class answer the second by an explicit denial of its alleged facts. They also aim a blow at the first by the assertion, that the early fathers taught the no-Sabbath doctrine, which must therefore be acknowledged as the real doctrine of the New Testament. 

And now the first class respond to these conflicting statements of the second and the third. And here is its response:— 

1. That our duty respecting the Sabbath, and respecting every other thing, can be learned only from the Scriptures. 

2. That the first three hundred years after the apostles, nearly accomplished the complete development of the great apostasy, which had commenced even in Paul’s time; and this age of apostatizing cannot be good authority for making changes in the law of God. 

3. That only a small proportion of the ministers and teachers of this period have transmitted any writings to our time; and these are

generally fragments of the original works, and they have come down to us mainly through the hands of the Romanists, who have never scrupled to destroy, or to corrupt, that which witnesses against themselves, whenever it has been in their power to do it. 

4. But, inasmuch as these two classes, viz., those who maintain the first-day Sabbath, and those who deny the existence of any Sabbath, both appeal to these fathers for testimony with which to sustain themselves, and to put down the first class, viz., those who hallow the ancient Sabbath, it becomes necessary that the exact truth respecting the writings of that age, which now exist, should be shown. There is but one method of doing this which will effectually end the controversy. This is to give every one of their testimonies concerning the Sabbath and first-day in their own words.

And now mark the work of apostasy: This work never begins by thrusting out God’s institutions, but always by bringing in those of men and at first only asking that they may be tolerated, while yet the ones ordained of God are sacredly observed. This, in time, being effected, the next effort is to make them equal with the divine." 

J.N. Andrews

IN the NEWS - This is what Politicians do with your Money & Children

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6:5

"Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) used a fake phone call to avoid answering questions about hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding he secured for a Philadelphia LGBTQ center that reportedly

“performs sex change surgeries on minors.”.....Casey, who is up for reelection against Republican businessman Dave McCormick, “fake[d] a phone call when asked why he gave $400k in federal funds to a controversial center that performs sex change surgeries on minors.”

During the 43-second clip, Casey does not look at the camera once. While speaking into the phone, he can be heard saying, “Maybe we can reschedule that later?” Casey nabbed $400,000 in funding for the Mazzoni Center..... "the group also connects patients to surgeons who can perform sex-change procedures. In Pennsylvania, these surgeries on minors are legal,” the outlet’s Jon Michael Raasch added.

The group has also reportedly been tied to multiple transgender youth events, including backing a “Pride Prom” for LGBTQ high-school-aged teens, per the Mail.
What is more, the Mazzoni Center’s website touts its bi-monthly “Femme University,” which is “a workshop aimed at catering to the younger generation of trans or gender nonconforming femmes.”
Those who participate in the workshop develop their “own definition of femme.” Breitbart

Creation Moment 6/20/2024 - Your billions of motors

Even every one that is called by My name: for I have created him for My glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him. 

Isaiah 43:7

"But did you know we have billions of motors that are much more complex than anyone can build—in our cells? The world’s smallest motor is called ATP synthase, and you have trillions of them in your body. 100,000 would fit side-by-side on a millimeter.

It is very important that these motors work correctly, because they make the fuel that our cells run on. They produce a chemical called ATP—about your body weight in ATP every day! Cyanide is such a deadly poison because it stops ATP production.

This motor is powered by an electrical current, thanks to another part of the cell that acts like a tiny battery. It spins at 10,000 rpm, and each turn produces three molecules of ATP. The ATP motor is almost 100% efficient: almost all the electrical energy is turned into ATP.

ATP synthase could not have evolved, because you can’t have evolution before you have a living thing that can make copies of itself, and every example of a living thing we know of has ATP synthase—it’s needed to live." 

CMI

Inside the Holy of Holies

"The command was communicated to Moses while in the mount with God, "Let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them;" and full directions were given for the construction of the tabernacle. 

Beyond the inner veil was the holy of holies, where centered the symbolic service of atonement and intercession, and which formed the connecting link between heaven and earth. 

In this apartment was the ark, a chest of acacia wood, overlaid within and without with gold, and having a crown of gold about the top. It was made as a depository for the tables of stone, upon which God Himself had inscribed the Ten Commandments. 

--Hence it was called the ark of God's testament, or the ark of the covenant, since the Ten Commandments were the basis of the covenant made between God and Israel.
The cover of the sacred chest was called the mercy seat. This was

wrought of one solid piece of gold, and was surmounted by golden cherubim, one standing on each end. One wing of each angel was stretched forth on high, while the other was folded over the body (see Ezekiel 1:11 Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.) in token of reverence and humility. 

The position of the cherubim, with their faces turned toward each other, and looking reverently downward toward the ark, represented the reverence with which the heavenly host regard the law of God and their interest in the plan of redemption." 

E.G.W.

Make a Joyful Noise performed by KIM HILL

Make a Joyful Noise performed by KIM HILL
[Click on LINK to Listen]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ukY-zC3yOnI?si=6BG5VSuivkblJiDe
Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, 

all ye lands. 

Psalm 100:1

IN the NEWS - The DISEASED IMAGINATIONS of Harvard

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

Based on the Creation they see around them -- from the mircroscope to the telescope -- they REFUSE to acknowledge a CREATOR GOD -- but -- they are willing (men with PhD's) to dabble in alien nonsense. They gave a DISEASED IMAGINATION from to many sci-fi movies.

"A study by Harvard social science researchers suggests that aliens may have been living on Earth for a while.

The research paper suggests that life forms from other worlds could be living underground on Earth or within the moon, and that UFOs and other unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) may be evidence of them getting around.
The paper has been taken down from ResearchGate since Newsweek published this article, but is still accessible using Internet Archive." 

Newsweek

Creation Moment 6/19/2024 - Old & New Testament Testify to Creator

"The Bible teaches God created the universe. In multiple verses in both the Old and New Testaments, it is clear that God created everything that was made. Here is a small listing:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” 

(Exodus 20:11).
“You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships You." 

(Nehemiah 9:6).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made” 

(John 1:1-3).
“For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16).
“Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” 

(Revelation 4:11)."

AIG

"Asleep"

"When He comes to give reward to His people, and when He calls for them, they, all that are dead, are found in the grave: "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." (John 5:28,29) 

Therefore the Bible answer to this question is plainly that he is in the grave.

Q: But what is his condition there? 

A: Let us read a verse from Job again: "Man gives up the ghost,

and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decays and dries up; so man lies down, and rises not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." (Job 14:10-12) This shows that man, when he dies, is asleep. 

Again, Job says that if he had died when he was an infant, "now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then had I been at rest, with kings and counselors of the earth.… There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master." (Job 3:13-19)

In the history of the kings of Israel and Judah, twenty-five times is the record made of their deaths, "He slept with his fathers."

Not to multiply texts, we again turn to the Word of Christ. Lazarus

was sick. Jesus and His disciples were some distance away, and Lazarus died. Jesus said: "Our friend Lazarus sleeps; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said the disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spoke of his death; but they thought that He had spoken of taking rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." (John 11:11-14) Here are the Words of Christ: "Lazarus sleeps;" "Lazarus is dead."

 Therefore the plain Word of Christ is that when a man is dead he is asleep." 

A.T. Jones

Matthew 10:28 & Luke 12:4,5

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matt. 10:28. 

“And I say unto you My friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him.” Luke 12:4, 5. 

1. These texts are the record, by different writers, of the same language of the Savior. The first one is often quoted by those who teach the immortality of the soul and its conscious existence in death. In Matthew’s version of the Savior’s words, the soul is indeed made very prominent; but in that of Luke, it is not mentioned. Yet the language of the one version is the same substance as that of the other. 2. Thus, while Matthew represents the Savior as saying, “Fear not

them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” Luke expresses the idea thus: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more they can do.” 

And Matthew adds, “Fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Luke gives the same warning, thus: “Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell.” 

3. Thus it is seen that our Lord recognizes the fact plainly expressed elsewhere, that there are two deaths. The first death, which is the common lot of mankind, is thus spoken of by Paul: “It is appointed unto men once to die.” Heb. 9:27.
The second death is the portion only of the wicked. “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” Rev. 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8. 

The Savior bids us not to fear those who can inflict only the first of these deaths; but He warns us to fear Him who alone is able to kill with the second death. 

4. The place in which the terrible punishment here set forth is inflicted, is called hell. This word is found in the English Testament twenty-three times. But in the Greek Testament there are three different words, hades, gehenna and tartarus, signifying different places, all rendered by the one English word, “hell.” Thus, hades is used eleven times in the original, and is rendered “hell” ten times and “grave” once. 

Thus hades is seen to be the place of the dead, whether righteous or wicked; the place into which they are introduced by death, and from which they are delivered by the resurrection. Those who are in hades are said to be dead. Rev. 20:13. Once, in the English Testament, hades is rendered “grave.” 1 Cor. 15:55. 

Gehenna, on the contrary, is the place where the wicked are to be cast alive with all their members, and to be destroyed soul and body. It is the lake of fire in which the wicked dead are to be punished after their resurrection. Rev. 20:13-15. 

Tartarus is the place into which the evil angels were cast after their rebellion. These three places, therefore, though rendered by the one English word “hell,” are not to be confounded with one another." 

J.N. Andrews

Creation Moment 6/18/2024 - Fine Tuning

I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. Isaiah 45:12

"John Leslie is thought provoking:

“One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; 

--for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; 

--for protons to be stable; 

--for complex chemistry to be possible; 

--for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; 

--and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). 

Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and

random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. 

Q: Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning?” [Our Place in the Cosmos, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1998]."

Uncommon Descent

Matthew 4:23 Under a Microscope

And Jesus went about all Galilee, 

teaching in their synagogues, 

and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, 

and healing all manner of sickness 

and all manner of disease among the people.

Matthew 4:23

Q: What was He Teaching?
A: Points of Doctrine (like about marriage, the Sabbath, State of the Dead, 2nd Advent, Justification, Sanctification, the Triune Godhead, etc.)
But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Mark 10:6-9
And He said unto them, What man shall there be among you,

that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.
Matthew 12:11:12
Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.
John 11:11,13
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
Mark 8:38
For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.
John 3:17
If ye love Me, keep My commandments.
John 14:15
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, he doeth the works. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever;
John 14:10:16

Spiritual Lessons (like the Parables)
But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.

Mark 4:34
And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?
Luke 6:39
Now learn a parable of the fig tree;
Matthew 24:32
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
Luke 8:11

and Prophecy (about His crucifixion and the end times)
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

John 3:14
But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet,...
Mark 13:14
And He said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them.
Luke 21:8
And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Matthew 24:3,6-8

Q: What was He preaching?
A: The Gospel and Repentance.
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the

kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Matthew 4:17
--For 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

Q: How much Healing?
A: Enough to physically exhaust the human body.

Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; and he laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them. And when it was day, He departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought

Him, and came unto Him, and stayed Him, that He should not depart from them.
Luke 4:40,42

And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.
Mark 6:31

This is My commandment, 

That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

 Greater love hath no man than this, 

that a man lay down his life for his friends. 

Ye are My friends, 

if ye do whatsoever I command you.

John 15:12-14

This Great Controversy

"The fall of man filled all heaven with sorrow. 

The world that God had made was blighted with the curse of sin and inhabited by beings doomed to misery and death. 

There appeared no escape for those who had transgressed the law.
But divine love had conceived a plan whereby man might be redeemed. 

---The broken law of God demanded the life of the sinner. 

---In all the universe there was but one who could, in behalf of man, satisfy its claims. 

---Since the divine law is as sacred as God Himself, only one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression.
To man the first intimation of redemption was communicated in the sentence pronounced upon Satan in the garden. The Lord declared, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15. 

This sentence, uttered in the hearing of our first parents, was to them a promise. While it foretold war between man and Satan, it declared that the power of the great adversary would finally be broken." E.G.W.

Creation Moment 6/17/2024 - The mind was never mud

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7

"Over 150 years ago, the battle over the human mind sidelined Alfred Russel Wallace from the elite science group that gathered around his co-theorist Charles Darwin. Wallace was unwilling to concede that the human mind is merely an organ that has evolved like any other.

As University of Durham historian Neil Thomas explains, for Wallace, “on more mature reflection, no simple ape-to-human progression was any longer tenable and he could no longer assent to the ontological equivalence of humans and nonhuman animals proposed by Darwin.” Thus Wallace was largely forgotten and Darwin became the cultural icon of evolution.

Yet Wallace’s skepticism was well justified. We have no evidence to support the assertion that the human mind evolved over time by natural processes. No one knows how our ancestors began to think like humans.

Later paleontologists chose a less harmful approach: Trying to locate the not-quite-humans among long-deceased groups like the Neanderthals and Flores man. But neither group has proven as dim as the search for the missing link requires. The Neanderthal art “bombshell” has seen to that.

Here’s the challenge for those postulating an evolutionary history for the mind: If man is biologically an animal but cognitively so

demonstrably unlike an animal, the obvious implication is that some aspect of the human mind is not biological. That thought, along with Wallace, is still banished from the academy. But a change may be building slowly. It is getting harder all the time to construct a history of the human race that goes “back to hours when mind was mud,” as Victorian poet George Meredith put it.
So let’s turn the question around: Why should we expect the human mind to have a history? Must immaterial things have evolutionary histories?

With respect to the origin of the human mind, traditional religious explanations shed more light than a science-based approach driven by materialist assumptions. That is, the traditional explanations begin by recognizing that humans are not just animals and offering an account for that fact." 

EN&V

Seven Sisters Point to Babel

"A Winston Churchill Fellow, Australian Aboriginal woman Susie Betts, studied indigenous creation stories involving the Seven Sisters star constellation, or the Pleiades.

Her research took her to North and South America.

She anticipated similarities with her own Wirangu people’s creation

story. In this, the ‘Orion the hunter’ constellation (the hunter ‘Tgilby’ in their language) falls in love with and chases the Seven Sisters (‘Yugarilya’).

And so it proved. “Her research found Indigenous people from across the globe shared creation links to the Seven Sisters constellation.”

Q: But why should cultures as geographically diverse as these and others (e.g., ancient Greece, Ukraine) similarly regard the stars in the Pleiades as seven women? 

Q: And most often sisters? 

Q: And chased by a hunter? 

The oldest known Greek mythologist Hesiod (8th century BC) had a line “Pleiades flee mighty Orion”. The book of Job, probably the oldest completed book of the Bible, records God asking Job, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?” (Job 38:31).

It would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary/long-age perspective! Nothing about the stars’ appearance suggests sisters—or even women. Also, why would the same star pattern suggest a hunter to both the ancient Greeks and to the Wirangu people? So, it would be a remarkable coincidence if the stars-to-sisters connection had occurred more than once by chance—let alone in cultures across the globe!

Rather, this points to the truth of the Bible’s account of the dispersal from Babel, just a few thousand years ago."

CMI

Why the cleansing of the sanctuary is an Important Doctrine

"THE eighth chapter of Daniel is a prophecy of wonderful interest; for it gives the prophetic history of the world from the rise of the Persian Empire till the final destruction of all earthly kingdoms by the God of Heaven.

---Now, it is plain that the period of twenty-three hundred days cannot be understood to mean so many literal days; for this would not make quite seven years, and would cover only a very small part of the duration of one of the three great empires of this vision. But we should remember that in this vision the great empires of the world are represented by symbols, and thus are given on a scale which brings them distinctly before the eye of the observer. It is necessary that the time should be given on a scale that corresponds with this in order not to involve an absurdity.
---The days must therefore represent longer periods of time. If we compare spiritual things with spiritual, we shall find the key to the interpretation of these days. For the different inspired writers were all led by the same Spirit of truth. They were like so many workmen engaged in building a temple. If we can find the rule which governed one of them, we shall find that same rule governing all the rest in like circumstances. Now God gave this rule to Ezekiel in the interpretation of the symbols of his own vision: “I have appointed thee each day for a year.” Eze.4:6. We shall find in Gabriel’s explanation of this vision of Daniel given in the ninth chapter, that the days in Daniel’s prophecy are so many years.

The fact that the cleansing of the sanctuary is 

--an event located in prophecy in the very conclusion of one of

Daniel’s great prophetic chains, 

--shows that it is an event of deep interest to mankind. 

--And as we live at a time when the 2300 days are in the past, we are most deeply concerned to understand the nature of the work called the cleansing of the sanctuary. 

The Bible is full of the subject of the sanctuary, and we shall find it a theme of intense interest if we give it careful study. 

*The Bible doctrine of the sanctuary is this: 

That the sanctuary is the place where the High Priest stands to offer blood before God for the sins of those who come to God through him. The central subject in the sanctuary is the ark which contains the law of God that man has broken. 

The cover of this ark was called the mercy-seat, because mercy came to those who had broken the law beneath it, when the high priest sprinkled the blood of sin-offering upon it, provided they accompanied his work by repentance and faith. 

Last of all was the work of cleansing the sanctuary when the high priest by blood removed the sins of the people from the sanctuary into which they had been borne by the ministration of the priests before God. We now invite attention to the testimony of the Bible respecting the sanctuary." 

J.N. Andrews

IN the NEWS - Ukraine's Thoughts in Times of War

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 

Jeremiah 17:9
In a TIME OF WAR this is what Ukraine has time for and scarce resources to spare for?

"Organizers of the KyivPride March announced on Thursday that the first gay pride event in the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of the Russian invasion will be held on June 16.
The Kyiv Independent reported that the event will have “strict security measures,” the most notable of which is that only the 500 registered participants will know when and where the march will begin.
“The march will take place in close proximity to shelters in case of an air alert,” the Kyiv Independent said, passing along one of the few details that has been divulged to the public.
Kyiv’s metro system was originally proposed as the venue for the march, but the city council denied permission, citing security concerns. Kyiv City Hall explained that the metro is a “dual-use facility and part of the city’s infrastructure,” and one of its uses is to serve as an air-raid shelter during Russian attacks." 

Breitbart

IN the NEWS - Russia's Thoughts in Time of War

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 

Jeremiah 17:9 

In a TIME OF WAR this is where the Thoughts of the heart of some Russian leaders are?

"Russia should shut down all the adult stores and use their merchandise as projectiles against Ukrainian troops, a lawmaker has proposed.
State Duma Deputy Vitaly Milonov made the comment in an interview with the Govorit Moskva radio station on Thursday. "We need to take all the stuff from sex shops, load it onto bombers and drop them on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Let these rubber ******* slap them upside the head,” Milonov said." 

RT

Creation Moment 6/16/2024 - More Evidence Venus is Volcanically Active

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

"Without plate tectonics, Venus should be dead, but lava has apparently been moving.

Volcanoes on Venus might be erupting right now (Space.com, 28 May 2024). Seeing lava movement on Venus is difficult due to its thick atmosphere. Researchers can look at radar data from the Magellan mission in the 1990s, and compare surface features from one orbit to another.

"Planetary scientists scouring decades-old data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft have found signs of lava flows coming from two volcanoes on Venus that erupted in the early 1990s. That was when Magellan orbited the hellish world overhead.

This marks the second time scientists have identified direct geological evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus, suggesting the planet could be as geologically active as Earth, with volcanoes possibly spewing on its surface as you read this."

Active lava flows on Venus raise the stakes for future exploration

(New Scientist, 27 May 2024). Did planetary scientists expect our sister planet to still be geologically active? Not necessarily; “Recent lava flows spotted on Venus suggest the planet could be much more geologically active than first thought, possibly as active as Earth,” writes reporter Alex Wilkins. 

Q: Why wouldn’t a planet nearly the same size as Earth be active? “Venus was once thought to be a ‘dead’ planet, with possible geological activity long having ceased,” he adds. That’s because there is no evidence Venus has plate tectonics.

So what could drive volcanoes if the crust has hardened on top of a cooling interior? Davide Sulcanese at D’Annunzio University in Chieti, Italy, admits ignorance.
“We still don’t know today how these processes work,” says Sulcanese. “Do we have some kind of one tectonic plate planet, or some sort of microplates, or something not like the plates we have on Earth? By studying this volcanic activity, we can better understand.”

It’s been 22 years since Magellan radar-mapped Venus, and scientists still don’t understand its geology. The Soviets landed on its surface, and orbiting missions have studied the atmosphere in detail." 

CEH

What day does John mean by “the Lord’s day”?

"In Revelation 1:10, John says, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.”

The question is, what day does John mean by “the Lord’s day”?

We believe that there is no clear use of that phrase in any writings of the fathers until near the end of the second century. And if that be

true, the argument for Sunday based on John's use of the phrase stretches out so thin—for it must stretch out over nearly a century—that it cannot carry the weight of argument suspended on it.
Because in the writings of a Second-Century father the phrase “Lord's day” meant Sunday, it does not therefore follow that in the writings of John the phrase meant Sunday.

John wrote the Revelation about the year AD. 90. Up to that time had the Bible writers ever used the term “Lord's day” to describe Sunday? No. They uniformly described Sunday simply as “the first day of the week.” (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1; Mat. 28:1) Even more striking is the fact that John himself, in his Gospel calls Sunday by the same colorless phrase as the other Bible writers used, “the first day of the week.” (John 20:1, 19)

There is only one day described in the Bible that could lay claim to being the Lord's day, and that is the Sabbath. The Ten Commandments describes it as “the Sabbath of the Lord.” Ex. 20:10. Isaiah tells us to call this day “the holy of the Lord.” Isa. 58:13." 

F.D. Nichols

Creation Moment 6/15/2024 - Social Darwinism & "Race Hygiene"

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth... Acts 17:26

"Social Darwinism, a belief based on the teachings of Charles Darwin, spread throughout Europe during the 19th century. 

It concluded the Aryan race was “superior and its purification was seen as the only means to prevent the degeneration of society.” At the medical school where Pernkoph was dean, he soon applied Darwinism to the school’s administration.
The result was “The Medical Faculty of Vienna suffered more than any other European faculty from ‘race hygiene.’ Within weeks of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, 153 of the faculty’s 197 members were dismissed. By far the most frequent reason for dismissal was Jewish origin.” Importantly, the “relationship between Viennese Jews and non-Jews had been relatively unproblematic until the late 19th century, when the ideas associated with social Darwinism began to spread and combine with overt anti-Semitism.” CEH

The weakest trusting child of God.....

Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. Psalm 89:15

"The weakest trusting child of God can have the blessed privilege of being guided by the light of God's countenance, safe from the pitfalls of Satan, if he will surrender his heart to God." 

Stephen Haskell

Creation Moment 6/14/2024 - Creation Astronomy does not have this problem

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens... Genesis 2:4

"James Webb telescope discovers earliest galaxy in the known universe — and its shockingly big (Live Science, 30 May 2024). Reporter Brandon Specktor indicates two surprises with the latest JWST find: galaxies that are too early and too big—"shockingly” big.

According to new research, astronomers using the powerful infrared telescope have revealed what appears to be the two earliest, most distant galaxies in the known universe, dating to just 300 million years after the Big Bang.

Alert readers always notice that the big bang is assumed as a given. It’s too essential as a part of the materialist worldview to question. Creator-denying cosmologists simply squeeze the natural production rate to maintain the belief.
With the larger of the galaxies measuring an estimated 1,600 light-years across, the discovery adds to a mounting pile of evidence that the earliest galaxies in the universe grew up much faster than leading theories of cosmology predict to be possible.

“It is stunning that the Universe can make such a galaxy in only 300 million years,” lead study author Stefano Carniani, an assistant

professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, said in a statement.

300 million years sounds like plenty of time to assemble a galaxy, but it represents only around 2.5% of the assumed age of the universe. Astronomers started worrying when the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) began imaging light from galaxies estimated to be 800 million years after the big bang.

In the old days before the HST and JWST, astronomers assumed they had billions of years for the first stars to form and assemble into galaxies. Now, Specktor writes, the light-gathering capabilities of JWST are poised to give cosmologists more to worry about: “the space telescope will soon reveal even older objects in the distant universe, perhaps dating as far back as the first 200 million years of cosmic history.”

Just a quick reminder: creation astronomy does not have this problem. 

In Genesis, early maturity is baked in. God created a mature, functioning universe, with the light from the distant reaches of space visible from Earth on the 4th day of creation." 

CEH