O Catolicismo Romano e o Livro de Gênesis
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Not Enough Monkeys in the Universe
The DNA molecule stores specific information by lining up four chemical compounds in a very specific order similar to the way Morse Code lines up three symbols (a dot, a dash, and a space) to convey a unique message. The order in which these four chemicals are arranged not only determines the distinguishing characteristics of an animal, but also if the organism will grow into a man or a marigold. Biochemists around the world are involved in a major undertaking to decode the language written on the human DNA molecule. But where did this fantastic molecule come from?
Scientists have had great success splicing new sections of DNA onto the DNA molecule, duplicating sections of DNA, producing the building blocks of DNA from basic chemicals, and unraveling the DNA molecular code. All too often, it is inferred that because we can do these things, we know how the molecule originated. However, this is a total distortion of reality.
Science has not even come close to explaining how the DNA molecule could have originated without intelligent guidance (i.e. creation). Here are just a few of the problems naturalistic scientists need to solve before making any sweeping statements concerning life’s origin:
1. When the building blocks of DNA are mixed together, they do react and link up...but not in the spiral
shape of the DNA molecule. How did the shape originally occur when it doesn’t happen now?
2. Great amounts of energy would be required to produce a molecule as complicated and as large as even
the simplest segment of DNA. Yet the molecule is so energy sensitive that it easily comes apart.
Many mechanisms are in place within a cell to protect the DNA molecule from degeneration. How
could DNA have survived before all the protective mechanisms existed?
3. DNA is not a random, meaningless molecule. It carries specific and useful information needed for
the formation and development of an organism. Where did this coded information come from?
4. Specific proteins function to construct copies of the DNA, but DNA is required to create the
needed proteins. How could one exist without the other being there first?
There are many other major problems which have no answer aside from the acknowledgment of an intelligent designer. Yet, chance processes continue to be the only possibilities taught. It has been said that given enough time, anything can happen (such as a monkey typing the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica). Rather than just accept such statements, let’s use the science of probability to ask, “How many monkeys (or how much time) would it take to randomly type just the title ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’?”
The odds of a monkey typing the ‘e’ of the title in the first place is 1 in 39 (the number of keys on a typical keyboard). The odds of getting an ‘e’ followed by an ‘n’ is (1/39 x 1/39). The odds of a monkey getting just the title ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ correct (one time) is 1/1036. If these monkeys are extremely proficient and persistent typists and make one attempt every second for the entire assumed age of the universe (15 billion years) it would still require 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 monkeys. In other words, enough monkeys to cover every square foot of the Earth’s surface, stacked over one mile deep, making one attempt every second for 15 billion years MIGHT type the title right...once. But even if one monkey did type the title right once, how would we ever recognize it among billions of trillions of wrong ones?
The useful information coded into the simplest DNA molecule is unimaginably more complicated that the simple title ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’. The odds of the useful code found on the DNA molecule forming by chance processes is astronomically smaller. In actuality, it is an absolute impossibility. Science clearly reveals that life can not form by evolutionary processes. Why aren’t we teaching our children these facts of science?
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
Light at the End of the Valley
By Maria
September 1, 2012
Have you ever faced something that seemed totally hopeless; you felt like there wasn’t any way out of your difficulties and everything looked lost? Or maybe you’re in one of those places right now where the situation seems impossible and it looks like this is going to go on and on, and there isn’t any hope in sight.
Maybe you seem all alone and feel like no one else is going through such intense, horrific, and painful circumstances, like you’re encircled on all sides with no place to run. You can’t seem to hear God speak to you and nothing seems to indicate that He’s there.
Maybe it would help to remember that there have been some pretty well-known people who have felt the same way—those who experienced great adversity. If you think I’m going to tell you that they slid by basically unscathed with great joy and victory in their hearts, no, I’m not, because that’s not what happened.
Here are a few examples of men in the Bible who suffered incredibly. We are given little glimpses into what they went through, but a few words on a page can scarcely convey the enormity of the struggles and battles that they had to fight.
We all know about Job. It wouldn’t hurt to go back and read the very vivid accounts of what he went through. He was in such anguish and distress that he bitterly blamed God for even letting him be born. He was at the point where he begged God to end his life.
Abraham is another one who could hardly bear the excruciating pain when God asked him to send away his firstborn son, Ishmael. It’s painful to even think about the indescribable agony he went through when he was faced with sacrificing Isaac, his son of hope, his son of promise, the one to carry on the family line, the one to support them in their old age, and the one he loved so very dearly.
I imagine Moses got pretty disheartened (to put it mildly) when the people he was giving his life to help turned against him and became vindictive and critical, constantly finding fault and barraging him with their grievances and assailing him with their verbal abuse. They leveled serious charges against him, repeatedly accusing him of bringing them into the wilderness to kill them, until at one point he cried out to God desperately, saying, “What am I going to do, Lord? These people are getting ready to stone me.”
David lost some of his sons, he lost his kingdom, he lost his health, and he lost a whole series of battles against his enemies. Try to imagine the torment and trauma he must have endured for long periods. You’re probably familiar with some of his feelings of woe and the despair in his writings in Psalms. Listen to this one: “Will the Lord turn away from us for ever? And isn’t He going to be kind to us any longer? Is His unfailing love gone permanently? Has His word come to nothing? Has He forgotten to be compassionate? Is He withholding His tender mercies because He’s angry with us?”[1] It sounds like he was at the end of his rope.
I think Jeremiah must have felt deeply discouraged. How could you have it any worse than this: Very influential people were plotting to kill him. He was rejected, he was mocked and despised, he was thrown in jail, and he was dumped into a well that had no water in it, only deep mud into which he sank.— Thank God, or that would have been the end of him! So there are always things to praise God for. But I have a feeling he must have gone through some major depression over all that, deeper than the pit he'd been thrown into and the mud he was mired in.
And Joseph! Poor Joseph! He must have faced intense discouragement and times of depression; after all, being sold into slavery by your own brothers is not something that you can lightly dismiss. But then, as soon as things began to look up, well, most of you know the story. He was unjustly thrown into prison with no hope of getting out. Hopeless. Helpless. Impossible.
Peter was evidently ready to give up his calling after he denied Jesus. Think about that for a while; what kind of feelings that must have brought with it. Having denied knowing his own Savior, how could he ever want to show his face in public again, much less be trusted as a leader of the early church?
Even Paul, who mostly tried to present his victories in his letters of encouragement to the churches, felt hopeless and despondent at times. Although in 2 Corinthians 4:8 Paul voiced the well-known verse, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair,” this apparently was in his “good” times, or at least better times. Listen to the other side of the situation, in which Paul said, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.”[2] It just shows that we can still have faith in Jesus even when things are so bad that it seems like it would be better not to even be alive.
These men are some of God’s greats. If they passed through such terrible anguish of spirit in their lives for God, why should we think it strange that God’s children today should have their times of desolation and even despair when they can’t see anything good coming from their lives? They can’t see the rewards. They can’t see the promises. It often just looks like failure.
Everyone goes through the valley of weeping and mourning at some point. David described it as the “valley of Baca,” meaning literally weeping, lamentations—a vale of tears.[3]
The key is that we go through it, and as we do, we can, as the Bible puts it, “make it a well.” It can become a place of refreshing springs.
In the previous two verses, David states that those who are praising God find their strength in Him. In their hearts are the ways of those who, passing through this valley of tears, make it a well.[4] We can tend to equate praising God with something we do when we feel all warm and happy and content, but one thing that all these “men of faith” have in common is that they continued to praise God through their valleys of Baca, their misery and suffering. They weren’t sitting around merrily singing little praise songs. They were in agony.
Sometimes they were enduring such intense suffering or despair that all they could do was cry out for the Lord’s mercy, but even that was a praise because it was acknowledging God’s total control and their faith in His mercy and power to deliver.
Verse 6 in the original text then goes on to tell us a beautiful secret. According to Strong's Concordance, the phrase that the King James translators translated as "the rain also filleth the pools" in the original Hebrew can also be translated as "The Teacher (referring to God, the Great Teacher) overshadows with blessings." What a beautiful interpretation, and how fitting it is.
So as we pass through this valley of tears and suffering and hardships, yet still praising Him, we can make that desolate valley of suffering into a spring of refreshing, and our Teacher overshadows us with blessings.
The water that becomes a fountain of refreshing can turn our journey of life—that would otherwise be gloomy and sad—into joy; turn our mourning into dancing, and give us comfort and beauty.[5] And later when we’ve come through the valley, we can look back with gratitude, realizing that these things have given enrichment and enhancement to our lives. Our Great Teacher will have enveloped us with priceless blessings of spiritual growth and a deeper understanding of Himself, and a heart that comes to resemble His own more and more.
[1] Psalm 77:7–9.
[2] 2 Corinthians 1:8 NIV.
[3] Psalm 84:6.
[4] Psalm 84:4–5.
[5] Psalm 30:11.
Copyright © 2012 The Family International.
Proteins: Life’s Molecular Machines
Proteins are huge molecules made by linking together hundreds, or even thousands, of different amino acids like beads on a long necklace. These proteins are not found in random arrangements, but are specifically designed to carry out unique biological functions. In order to function properly, they must have exactly the right amino acids, in exactly the right positions, and be of exactly the right length. It is the specific sequence of the ‘beads’ on a protein chain that allows each one to form the perfect 3-dimensional configuration needed to perform the required functions within our bodies.
It is estimated that the human body contains over 200,000 different proteins.1 The following description of proteins is given by molecular biologist Michael Denton: “If a cell were magnified a thousand million times...in every direction we looked, we would see all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that these simplest of the functional components of the cell -- the protein molecules -- were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand individual atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial configurations…the task of designing even one such molecular machine - that is, a single functioning protein molecule - would be completely beyond our capacity...”2
One example of a very common protein is the hemoglobin molecule. Hemoglobin is a protein in our red blood cells that transports oxygen throughout our bodies. The molecule is perfectly designed to transport the optimal amount of oxygen in exactly the right way. If just one of the 287 amino acids which make up the hemoglobin molecule is out of place, an often fatal disease called sickle-cell anemia results. Because of this misplacement of just 1 out of 287 specific amino acids, the defective hemoglobin molecules bind together when the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream becomes low. This in turn stretches the red blood cells into a sickle shape which cannot easily flow through small blood vessels.
If this is the consequence of the misplacement of just one amino acid out of 287; how could all of the very specific proteins needed by the first form of life have developed by random chance processes? The simplest known form of life has over 100 different (and specific) proteins. These are all formed from only L-type amino acids and are arranged in a very specific order by the DNA molecule. Yet in the words of John Horgan, “The DNA cannot do its work, including forming more DNA, without the help of proteins. In short, proteins cannot form without DNA, but neither can DNA form without proteins.” This is the classic chicken or egg mystery. You need both to be present simultaneously because one cannot form without the other.
Further complicating the process is the fact that all laboratory experiments simulating the conditions necessary for the formation of life produce a random mixture of 50:50 R and L stereotypes. The odds of just one protein forming (such as the 287 amino acid hemoglobin molecule) with all L stereotypes, could be compared to flipping a coin and getting “heads” 287 times in a row. This could statistically only happen only once in every 10124 tries. Most scientists agree that any specific event with odds greater than 1050 will never happen. It gets even more impossible, though, because proteins are not just random molecules, but need all the amino acids to be in a specific order to function correctly. The odds of getting the specific 100 proteins required for the simplest form of life, with all L stereotypes, and all in the specific order needed, is greater than 1/1010,000. Yet, a single human body uses not a mere 100, but 100,000 such specifically designed proteins!
These outlandish odds demonstrate the scientific impossibility of the formation of life by chance reactions. However, these problems are almost never presented in textbooks. Our children deserve better than an indoctrination which ignores these overwhelming problems.
1. James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard, Refuge, 1999, p. 66.
2. Michael Denton, Evolution:A theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, p. 328. 3. John Horgan, “In the Beginning”, Scientific American, 2/91, p. 119.
It is estimated that the human body contains over 200,000 different proteins.1 The following description of proteins is given by molecular biologist Michael Denton: “If a cell were magnified a thousand million times...in every direction we looked, we would see all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that these simplest of the functional components of the cell -- the protein molecules -- were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand individual atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial configurations…the task of designing even one such molecular machine - that is, a single functioning protein molecule - would be completely beyond our capacity...”2
One example of a very common protein is the hemoglobin molecule. Hemoglobin is a protein in our red blood cells that transports oxygen throughout our bodies. The molecule is perfectly designed to transport the optimal amount of oxygen in exactly the right way. If just one of the 287 amino acids which make up the hemoglobin molecule is out of place, an often fatal disease called sickle-cell anemia results. Because of this misplacement of just 1 out of 287 specific amino acids, the defective hemoglobin molecules bind together when the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream becomes low. This in turn stretches the red blood cells into a sickle shape which cannot easily flow through small blood vessels.
If this is the consequence of the misplacement of just one amino acid out of 287; how could all of the very specific proteins needed by the first form of life have developed by random chance processes? The simplest known form of life has over 100 different (and specific) proteins. These are all formed from only L-type amino acids and are arranged in a very specific order by the DNA molecule. Yet in the words of John Horgan, “The DNA cannot do its work, including forming more DNA, without the help of proteins. In short, proteins cannot form without DNA, but neither can DNA form without proteins.” This is the classic chicken or egg mystery. You need both to be present simultaneously because one cannot form without the other.
Further complicating the process is the fact that all laboratory experiments simulating the conditions necessary for the formation of life produce a random mixture of 50:50 R and L stereotypes. The odds of just one protein forming (such as the 287 amino acid hemoglobin molecule) with all L stereotypes, could be compared to flipping a coin and getting “heads” 287 times in a row. This could statistically only happen only once in every 10124 tries. Most scientists agree that any specific event with odds greater than 1050 will never happen. It gets even more impossible, though, because proteins are not just random molecules, but need all the amino acids to be in a specific order to function correctly. The odds of getting the specific 100 proteins required for the simplest form of life, with all L stereotypes, and all in the specific order needed, is greater than 1/1010,000. Yet, a single human body uses not a mere 100, but 100,000 such specifically designed proteins!
These outlandish odds demonstrate the scientific impossibility of the formation of life by chance reactions. However, these problems are almost never presented in textbooks. Our children deserve better than an indoctrination which ignores these overwhelming problems.
1. James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard, Refuge, 1999, p. 66.
2. Michael Denton, Evolution:A theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, p. 328. 3. John Horgan, “In the Beginning”, Scientific American, 2/91, p. 119.
Witnessing
By David Brandt Berg
Download Audio (7.04MB)
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” is not an option. It’s a commandment. The message is clear. There’s no denying it or excusing ourselves. We must simply have the faith to obey, even if it means going out not knowing whither we go.1
Jesus made it quite clear that all Christians are ordained to preach the Gospel when He said in John 15:16, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit.”
Therefore, it is not just a nice thing to do when we feel like it or can find the time, but it is the God-given job and responsibility of all of His true children, as Paul expressed, “For though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me: yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.”2
This is why we devote our time and energies to preaching the Gospel to every creature and winning their souls to Jesus Christ and His service for others.3 That’s what we’re here for: to win people to Christ! For “herein is My Father glorified, that ye bearmuch fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.”4
Regardless of nationality, country, color, or creed, the heart of man is the same the world over, and his heartaches and sorrows and sins and pains and fear of death are the same. His longings, loves, and hunger for God and His truth, for joy and happiness and peace of mind, are God-created, and the same in men the world over.
Even though many people are seeking genuine love, they seldom, if ever, find it. For there are never enough of God’s people who are willing to show them His real love. As Jesus Himself said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Therefore,” He commanded, “pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.”5
Only the supernatural, miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit of God Himself can do the job and win their hearts, bring them to a decision, and cause them to be bornagain as new creatures. Therefore, God has promised an anointing of this very power to His witnesses to help them lead others to Him. “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”6 The purpose of the power is for witnessing.
We’ve got nothing but God, so let’s show them His Spirit! As Paul said, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”7 It’s this fiery anointing that counts.
If you haven’t got the fire, I don’t care how “good” a witness you are; it’s just cold, dead icicles of facts and figures, and you’ll never set anyone else on fire without it! As Jesus said, “Without Me, ye can do nothing.”8
But if you do your part, and “abide in the vine,” yielding yourself to Him in submission and humility, then the Lord will do His part, and inspire you, or fill you with His Spirit, so you can “bear much fruit”—newborn babes into the kingdom of God.9
As a young preacher with real love for the lost and a sincere desire to try to win the lost the churches had failed to reach, I tried everything I could think of, dreamed up every method I could imagine to try to carry the Gospel to them. I preached on the streets and in the parks; I sang at the top of my voice; I showed pictures and movies anywhere I possibly could—to reach people with the message of God’s love! But it was still the meeting method and the mass evangelism approach, which only had moderate success.
Then, one day I found out the exciting truth and thrilling fact that you could win more souls witnessing individually to individual people wherever you could find them, anywhere, any time, all the time, everywhere to everybody! You have to search them out individually, personally, with tender loving care and personal attention. Jesus said that the good shepherd “calleth his own sheep by name (personally, individually) and leadeth them out.”10
As children of God, you should have love and compassion for everyone—young or old, rich or poor, strong or weak, even if you don’t like them—“every creature!” However, God’s Spirit will lead you especially to those who really need your loving help, and who will respond in appreciation, just as the Spirit will also lead them to you.
God’s Spirit goes where there are open and receptive hearts that are hungry. He seeks the low and the humble and the contrite heart, but resists the proud. His Word says, “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich (or full) He hath sent empty away. … For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”11
In leading people to the Lord, you often have to inspire their faith in you before they can believe in God. You are their link with God. As Jesus said, “He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”12
You must establish points of contact with them. There must be something in common in order for people to communicate. Use the kind of language that will win them. If it takes strong language to get the point across, use it! If it takes sweeter language, use that. Ask God for wisdom.13
One of the most needed abilities in witnessing is adaptability: being able to beanything to reach anybody and to become all things to all men. This tactic of adaptability was largely responsible for much of the apostle Paul’s soul-winning success. He said, “To the Jews, I became as a Jew; that I might gain (win) the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them. ... I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”14
Sometimes, all people need is for someone to listen, and that’s half the job of being a witness. Let’s not fail them in showing them we’re willing to listen to their troubles. Often they’re really hungriest for fellowship and companionship and real love and sympathy, just somebody to talk to, to relieve their loneliness and to feel like somebody cares and shares their misery and their needs and problems.
(Prophecy:) “Can you not hear the heartcry of their bosom? To love is to weep with them, to cry with them, to suffer with them that suffer, and to feel the agony of heart with them whose hearts are broken!”
Originally published May 1975. Updated and republished September 2012.
Read by Peter Amsterdam.
1 Hebrews 11:8.
2 1 Corinthians 9:16. See also Ezekiel 3:17–19.
3 Mark 16:15.
4 John 15:8.
5 Matthew 9:37–38.
6 Acts 1:8.
7 1 Corinthians 2:4–5.
8 John 15:5.
9 See John 15:1–8.
10 John 10:3.
11 Psalm 34:18; Luke 1:53; 1 Peter 5:5.
12 John 13:20.
13 James 1:5.
14 1 Corinthians 9:20, 22.
Download Audio (7.04MB)
“Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” is not an option. It’s a commandment. The message is clear. There’s no denying it or excusing ourselves. We must simply have the faith to obey, even if it means going out not knowing whither we go.1
Jesus made it quite clear that all Christians are ordained to preach the Gospel when He said in John 15:16, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit.”
Therefore, it is not just a nice thing to do when we feel like it or can find the time, but it is the God-given job and responsibility of all of His true children, as Paul expressed, “For though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me: yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.”2
This is why we devote our time and energies to preaching the Gospel to every creature and winning their souls to Jesus Christ and His service for others.3 That’s what we’re here for: to win people to Christ! For “herein is My Father glorified, that ye bearmuch fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.”4
Regardless of nationality, country, color, or creed, the heart of man is the same the world over, and his heartaches and sorrows and sins and pains and fear of death are the same. His longings, loves, and hunger for God and His truth, for joy and happiness and peace of mind, are God-created, and the same in men the world over.
Even though many people are seeking genuine love, they seldom, if ever, find it. For there are never enough of God’s people who are willing to show them His real love. As Jesus Himself said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Therefore,” He commanded, “pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.”5
Only the supernatural, miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit of God Himself can do the job and win their hearts, bring them to a decision, and cause them to be bornagain as new creatures. Therefore, God has promised an anointing of this very power to His witnesses to help them lead others to Him. “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”6 The purpose of the power is for witnessing.
We’ve got nothing but God, so let’s show them His Spirit! As Paul said, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”7 It’s this fiery anointing that counts.
If you haven’t got the fire, I don’t care how “good” a witness you are; it’s just cold, dead icicles of facts and figures, and you’ll never set anyone else on fire without it! As Jesus said, “Without Me, ye can do nothing.”8
But if you do your part, and “abide in the vine,” yielding yourself to Him in submission and humility, then the Lord will do His part, and inspire you, or fill you with His Spirit, so you can “bear much fruit”—newborn babes into the kingdom of God.9
As a young preacher with real love for the lost and a sincere desire to try to win the lost the churches had failed to reach, I tried everything I could think of, dreamed up every method I could imagine to try to carry the Gospel to them. I preached on the streets and in the parks; I sang at the top of my voice; I showed pictures and movies anywhere I possibly could—to reach people with the message of God’s love! But it was still the meeting method and the mass evangelism approach, which only had moderate success.
Then, one day I found out the exciting truth and thrilling fact that you could win more souls witnessing individually to individual people wherever you could find them, anywhere, any time, all the time, everywhere to everybody! You have to search them out individually, personally, with tender loving care and personal attention. Jesus said that the good shepherd “calleth his own sheep by name (personally, individually) and leadeth them out.”10
As children of God, you should have love and compassion for everyone—young or old, rich or poor, strong or weak, even if you don’t like them—“every creature!” However, God’s Spirit will lead you especially to those who really need your loving help, and who will respond in appreciation, just as the Spirit will also lead them to you.
God’s Spirit goes where there are open and receptive hearts that are hungry. He seeks the low and the humble and the contrite heart, but resists the proud. His Word says, “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich (or full) He hath sent empty away. … For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”11
In leading people to the Lord, you often have to inspire their faith in you before they can believe in God. You are their link with God. As Jesus said, “He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”12
You must establish points of contact with them. There must be something in common in order for people to communicate. Use the kind of language that will win them. If it takes strong language to get the point across, use it! If it takes sweeter language, use that. Ask God for wisdom.13
One of the most needed abilities in witnessing is adaptability: being able to beanything to reach anybody and to become all things to all men. This tactic of adaptability was largely responsible for much of the apostle Paul’s soul-winning success. He said, “To the Jews, I became as a Jew; that I might gain (win) the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them. ... I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”14
Sometimes, all people need is for someone to listen, and that’s half the job of being a witness. Let’s not fail them in showing them we’re willing to listen to their troubles. Often they’re really hungriest for fellowship and companionship and real love and sympathy, just somebody to talk to, to relieve their loneliness and to feel like somebody cares and shares their misery and their needs and problems.
(Prophecy:) “Can you not hear the heartcry of their bosom? To love is to weep with them, to cry with them, to suffer with them that suffer, and to feel the agony of heart with them whose hearts are broken!”
Originally published May 1975. Updated and republished September 2012.
Read by Peter Amsterdam.
1 Hebrews 11:8.
2 1 Corinthians 9:16. See also Ezekiel 3:17–19.
3 Mark 16:15.
4 John 15:8.
5 Matthew 9:37–38.
6 Acts 1:8.
7 1 Corinthians 2:4–5.
8 John 15:5.
9 See John 15:1–8.
10 John 10:3.
11 Psalm 34:18; Luke 1:53; 1 Peter 5:5.
12 John 13:20.
13 James 1:5.
14 1 Corinthians 9:20, 22.
Obama's America: Waiting for Blowback
| Posted: 01 Sep 2012 03:45 AM PDT By Nicolas J.S. Davies, Huffington Post, Aug. 30, 2012 The United States has suffered three widely acknowledged military disasters since the end of the Second World War: in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. The American public responded to each crisis by electing new leaders with a mandate to end the wars and avoid new ones. But in each case, our new leaders failed to make the genuine recommitment to peace and diplomacy that was called for. Instead, they allayed the fears of the public by moving American war-making farther into the shadows, deploying the CIA and special operations forces in covert operations and proxy wars, sowing seeds of violence and injustice that would fester for decades and often erupt into conflict many years later. Six months after taking office, President Eisenhower signed an armistice agreement to end the Korean War. But three weeks later, he unleashed the CIA’s first covert operation, to overthrow the elected government of Iran. The nationalization of Iran’s oil industry was reversed and U.S. oil companies gained a substantial share of Iran’s oil production. Problem solved, right? Not exactly—the U.S. coup and its support for the Shah’s despotic rule led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and a hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy. Now the long-term breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran threatens to explode into a new American war. A year later, the CIA followed up on its “success” in Iran by removing another elected leader, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala. The coup rescued United Fruit Company’s ownership of 42% of the agricultural land in Guatemala from Arbenz’s modest efforts at land reform, but the 42-year civil war that followed killed at least 250,000 people. The U.S. defeat in Vietnam led to ten years of relative peace, in which the U.S. avoided open warfare anywhere in the world. But once again, this concealed what senior U.S. military officers have called the “disguised, quiet, media-free” approach to war in Central America and Afghanistan. Proxy forces armed with American weapons and supported by small numbers of American “advisers” once again plunged millions of people’s lives into chaos. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, the political parties the U.S. fought in the 1980s have eventually won elections and come to power anyway. And in Afghanistan, mujaheddin that the U.S. armed and supported in the 1980s produced the most dramatic act of “blowback” ever on September 11th 2001, plunging America into a decade or more of war, economic crisis and global chaos that we have yet to find our way out of. President Obama fulfilled the U.S. commitment to withdraw from Iraq that the Maliki government wrung out of the Bush administration, and he stopped the CIA from kidnapping people and bundling them off to Guantanamo. But even after his much-vaunted “withdrawal” from Afghanistan, there will still be twice as many U.S. troops there as when he took office. And he halted the parade of men in orange jump suits stumbling off American planes into the tropical sunshine in Cuba, not by restoring the rule of law, but by ordering the extra-judicial execution of terrorism suspects—a national policy of cold-blooded murder. Not a week goes by without news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan or Yemen, but the U.S. also conducts assassinations by helicopter-borne special forces like the ones who killed Osama Bin Laden. The former head of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Admiral Eric Olson, told an Aspen Institute conference that SOCOM conducts a dozen such operations every night in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The total number of night raids in Afghanistan escalated from twenty per month in early 2009 to over a thousand per month two years later, and senior officers admit that at least half of them target the wrong person or house. Sixty thousand U.S. special operations forces now conduct assassinations, night-raids, training missions, joint operations and exercises in 120 countries around the world, twice as many as when Obama came to power, with deployments in about 70 countries at any given time. In The Politics of Heroin, Alfred McCoy described how the CIA formed secret alliances with Nationalist Chinese generals in Burma and Thailand, Corsican gangsters in Marseilles, Afghan warlords, Haitian military officers, Manuel Noriega in Panama and Nicaraguan Contra commanders. In every case, the CIA’s partners exploited their impunity as U.S. allies to become major players in the global drug trade. Now former Mexican special forces trained at Fort Bragg and Fort Benning run the Zetas drug cartel, and the new police chief installed by a U.S. offensive in Kandahar province in Afghanistan in 2011 reportedly earns $60 million a year from opium smuggling. The current expansion of U.S. special forces to conduct covert and proxy warfare sacrifices U.S. long term interests in peace, stability and the rule of law for short-term political gain, just as when U.S. “advisers” were sent to Vietnam in the 1950s and to Central America and Afghanistan in the 1980s. But which of the 120 countries where U.S. special forces now operate will become the next Vietnam or Iran or Guatemala? Could it be India, which holds 50 joint training exercises a year with U.S. forces, the most of any country in the world, as it battles separatists in Kashmir and Assam and a “people’s war” by Naxalites or Maoists in 7 other provinces? Or what about Uganda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Djibouti or Kenya, where U.S. forces are training African Union “peacekeepers” to fight the Al-Shabab militia in Somalia? Or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic or South Sudan, where U.S. special forces have been sent to track down Joseph Kony but are suspected of planning a covert war against Sudan? The pervasiveness and perversity of America’s military madness could produce severe “blowback” from any one of the 120 countries where U.S. special forces now operate. So how will we respond when the inevitable blowback comes? Will we once again fall in line as our leaders lash out at some new enemy? Or will we know enough of our own history to look in the mirror and recognize the real source of the violence and chaos that our irresponsible leaders keep unleashing on the world? |
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Book on Bin Laden Killing Contradicts U.S. Account
Posted: 31 Aug 2012 03:43 AM PDT
By Eric Schmitt, NY Times, August 29, 2012
WASHINGTON—A new first-person account of the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last year contradicts the Obama administration’s previous descriptions of the mission, raising questions about whether the leader of Al Qaeda posed a clear threat to the commandos who fired on him.
According to the account in the book, “No Easy Day,” which will go on sale next week under the pseudonym Mark Owen, Bin Laden was shot in the head when he peered out of his bedroom door into a top-floor hallway of his compound as the SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell toward him.
The author, whom military officials have identified as Matt Bissonnette, 36, said he was directly behind the “point man,” or lead commando, as the SEALs followed Bin Laden into the room, where they found him on the floor at the foot of his bed with “blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull,” and two women wailing over his body, which was “still twitching and convulsing.”
The author said he and another member then trained their weapons on Bin Laden’s chest and fired several rounds, until he was motionless. The SEALs later found two unloaded weapons—an AK-47 rifle and a Makarov pistol—near the bedroom door.
In the administration’s version of events, the lead commando’s shot in the stairwell missed, and the SEALs confronted Bin Laden in the bedroom, killing him with one shot to the chest and another above the left eye.
The new book’s account, if true, raises the question of whether Bin Laden posed a clear threat in his death throes.
Military officials have said that the SEALs made split-second decisions, fearing that Bin Laden, though unarmed, could have exploded a suicide vest or other booby trap. Critics, however, say that while the military has described the raid as a “kill or capture” mission, there was virtually no chance the SEALS would bring Bin Laden back alive.
The Pentagon and the White House declined to comment on the new account, reflecting at least in part the administration’s reluctance to reopen an issue at a time when Republicans have accused the administration of exploiting the raid’s success to burnish President Obama’s national security credentials during his re-election campaign.
Elsewhere in the book, the author states that members of the SEALs unit were not “huge fans of Obama,” although they respected the commander in chief for authorizing the operation. “We just got this guy re-elected,” the author quotes another member of the unit, identified by the pseudonym Walt, as saying.
The Associated Press and The Huffington Post reported the new account of Bin Laden’s death on Wednesday after purchasing copies of the book. The New York Times obtained a copy later on Wednesday.
In response to a crush of news media attention, criticism and consumer demand, Dutton, the imprint of Penguin that acquired the book in secret, said this week that it was moving up the book’s planned Sept. 11 release date by one week, to Tuesday. Demand for the 336-page book has been enormous; it is currently No. 1 on the best-seller lists at Amazon.com and BN.com.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Chinese Language Reveals Creation
One of the primary characteristics that separate human behavior from animals’ is the ability to transfer abstract concepts to another human via written language. The Bible teaches that this ability came directly from our Creator. It also teaches that the vastly different languages of the world are a result of the confusion of one original language during an event known as the tower of Babel. Our English word babble (meaning gibberish, chatter, nonsense) has it roots in this event. Modern scientific studies really have no better explanation because it is still a mystery how totally different languages could have developed by any natural process.
There should be accounts in ancient cultures for Biblical events such as the creation of man, the fall of man, the existence of a single creator (God), the world wide flood, and the tower of Babel; if these were actual happenings in time and space. Knowledge of all these events can be found not just in the Bible, but in the ancient writings of people throughout the world.
One of the more interesting collaborations can be found within the very characters of ancient Chinese letter symbols. Ancient Chinese writing consisted of a series of word pictures or pictographs which combined separate features to express an idea or concept. Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism dominate the religious beliefs of China today. However, 2000 years before the appearance of any of these religious beliefs, the ancient Chinese served a single creator god known as “Shang Ti”. The symbol for Shang Ti (God) is a combination of the symbol for emperor and the symbol for heaven (or above).
Thus, the original God worshiped by the Chinese was a single heavenly emperor (not many gods).
The Bible states that God created man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. This is presented as a factual event and the original Biblical language is not poetry, but a narrative description of a literal event. We even read in Matthew that Jesus Christ referred to this event as a true happening rather than a symbolic concept, “Have you not read that in the beginning He made them man and women.” The ancient Chinese symbol for create is a combination of person (or breath), dust, walking, and alive.
Thus, to create, is to have dust walk, breathe, and live.
The Bible further describes a world wide flood catastrophe in which all human life with the exception of eight individuals on a floating vessel were destroyed. The ancient Chinese symbol for ‘boat’ is vessel, eight, and people.
Thus, a boat is eight people on board of a vessel!
The Bible again states that man was told to spread out over the earth after the worldwide flood. Yet, he rebelled and built a tower to his own glory. God ended this rebellion by confusing man’s language so that the people set out and journeyed across the globe in different language groups. Interestingly, the ancient Chinese chose to use the identical symbol for confusion and rebellion ... a combination of tongue and right leg (or journey).
Thus, to confuse is to set out on a journey with a new tongue (or language).
These are just a few of the many examples of the historical knowledge of the Bible that the ancient Chinese people must have had as they developed their written language. Many more examples can be found in an excellent book by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson called The Discovery of Genesis.
The Inevitable Extinction of Humanity
By Bruce Malone
For the last 200 years, science has increasingly become ruled by a single “prime directive.” Those who remember the original Star Trek series will recall that every starship in the Federation fleet was bound by one unbreakable rule—they were never to interfere with the development of another culture. In a similar way, one unbreakable rule guides all modern scientific endeavors. Richard Dickerson, a prominent biochemist and member of the elite National Academy of Sciences, states it this way, “Science, fundamentally is a game. It is a game with one overriding and defining rule: Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without ever invoking the supernatural... A chess player is perfectly capable of moving his opponent’s king physically from the board and smashing it in the midst of a tournament. This would not make him the champion because the rules have not been followed.” 1
It is because of the “prime directive” of science (i.e. we must explain everything via evolution) that no matter how conclusive the evidence for our recent creation, it will not be acknowledged. Further-more, the evidence pointing to this reality will be buried, ignored, and at times not even seen by those whose paradigm of reality is that the prime directive must be upheld even at the cost of intellectual honesty.
For the last 50 years, it has been acknowledged that if there is more than one minor mistake on the genetic code of a species per generation, that species is ultimately doomed to extinction. For instance, if cockroaches have been around for 300 million years and they have one minor random change to their DNA every generation, over a billion meaningless mistakes would have built up - dooming them to extinction. No mechanism exists which can eliminate these minor mistakes. Natural selection can act as a quality control mechanism which can eliminate individuals with major genetic problems because such offspring are less fit for survival. However, natural selection cannot remove mistakes in the genetic code that build up having minimal survival effect.
For instance, suppose our genetic code was similar to a textbook full of information and each subsequent copy of the textbook had a few letters randomly changed. Natural selection would be like the test taken by everyone who had read each unique textbook with its individual set of errors. Very few, if any of the textbooks, could be eliminated based on the results of end of the year student testing. The next generation of books would have a few more errors, and the third generation a few more..etc...until the textbook ultimately became meaningless nonsense. Yet, for any given textbook generation, natural selection (the testing of students using all of the textbooks from that generation of books) would have no ability to eliminate any but the most blatantly erroneous textbooks. This is why it has been acknowledged that more than one minor error per generation will ultimately doom a species to extinction due to the “genetic load” of errors building up on its DNA code.2
It is not widely reported that every generation of humans has not one random error in their DNA code but thousands of random and permanent changes. These random changes are actually a loss of functioning information—the same way that random changes in the letters of a textbook result in the loss of information content.
The obvious question of ‘where did all of the original information come from?’ is also being ignored, as is the rate of detrimental changes -- orders of magnitude greater than any yet to be identified source of adding information. Furthermore, the rate at which mistakes are increasing on the human genome provides compelling evidence that the human genome cannot possibly have been around more than a few hundred generations nor can it survive indefinitely.
Never has there been so much scientific evidence supporting the reality that humans were recently created by an unimaginably intelligent designer. It is this evidence which makes it obvious that our hope lies not in this life nor in this physical universe—which is winding down, not up. Our hope lies in reconciling ourselves with the designer of this universe and in what He has done to provide for us in the eternity which will follow our physical extinction.
1. Dr. Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Simon & Schuster,
p. 240, 1998.
2. Dr. J.C. Sanford, Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome, Ivan Press, 2005.
For the last 200 years, science has increasingly become ruled by a single “prime directive.” Those who remember the original Star Trek series will recall that every starship in the Federation fleet was bound by one unbreakable rule—they were never to interfere with the development of another culture. In a similar way, one unbreakable rule guides all modern scientific endeavors. Richard Dickerson, a prominent biochemist and member of the elite National Academy of Sciences, states it this way, “Science, fundamentally is a game. It is a game with one overriding and defining rule: Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without ever invoking the supernatural... A chess player is perfectly capable of moving his opponent’s king physically from the board and smashing it in the midst of a tournament. This would not make him the champion because the rules have not been followed.” 1
It is because of the “prime directive” of science (i.e. we must explain everything via evolution) that no matter how conclusive the evidence for our recent creation, it will not be acknowledged. Further-more, the evidence pointing to this reality will be buried, ignored, and at times not even seen by those whose paradigm of reality is that the prime directive must be upheld even at the cost of intellectual honesty.
For the last 50 years, it has been acknowledged that if there is more than one minor mistake on the genetic code of a species per generation, that species is ultimately doomed to extinction. For instance, if cockroaches have been around for 300 million years and they have one minor random change to their DNA every generation, over a billion meaningless mistakes would have built up - dooming them to extinction. No mechanism exists which can eliminate these minor mistakes. Natural selection can act as a quality control mechanism which can eliminate individuals with major genetic problems because such offspring are less fit for survival. However, natural selection cannot remove mistakes in the genetic code that build up having minimal survival effect.
For instance, suppose our genetic code was similar to a textbook full of information and each subsequent copy of the textbook had a few letters randomly changed. Natural selection would be like the test taken by everyone who had read each unique textbook with its individual set of errors. Very few, if any of the textbooks, could be eliminated based on the results of end of the year student testing. The next generation of books would have a few more errors, and the third generation a few more..etc...until the textbook ultimately became meaningless nonsense. Yet, for any given textbook generation, natural selection (the testing of students using all of the textbooks from that generation of books) would have no ability to eliminate any but the most blatantly erroneous textbooks. This is why it has been acknowledged that more than one minor error per generation will ultimately doom a species to extinction due to the “genetic load” of errors building up on its DNA code.2
It is not widely reported that every generation of humans has not one random error in their DNA code but thousands of random and permanent changes. These random changes are actually a loss of functioning information—the same way that random changes in the letters of a textbook result in the loss of information content.
The obvious question of ‘where did all of the original information come from?’ is also being ignored, as is the rate of detrimental changes -- orders of magnitude greater than any yet to be identified source of adding information. Furthermore, the rate at which mistakes are increasing on the human genome provides compelling evidence that the human genome cannot possibly have been around more than a few hundred generations nor can it survive indefinitely.
Never has there been so much scientific evidence supporting the reality that humans were recently created by an unimaginably intelligent designer. It is this evidence which makes it obvious that our hope lies not in this life nor in this physical universe—which is winding down, not up. Our hope lies in reconciling ourselves with the designer of this universe and in what He has done to provide for us in the eternity which will follow our physical extinction.
1. Dr. Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Simon & Schuster,
p. 240, 1998.
2. Dr. J.C. Sanford, Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome, Ivan Press, 2005.
