Try Looking into the Microscope- Bruce Malone

NASA has spent hundreds of millions of dollars scanning every minute portion of the sky with radio telescopes. Its goal is to locate signals coming to earth from extraterrestrial life forms. Although NASA has backed off on these efforts, private funds are still being solicited in order to continue the search. How would we identify a signal as coming from an intelligent source? It would have to consist of a complex pattern with occasionally repeated segments which could not be generated by a formula or a natural cause. An example of a repeated complex pattern is any human language. The carrier of the sequence could be as varied as ink on paper, electro-magnetic signals in space, sound through air, or smoke signals in the sky. Whenever and wherever such a pattern is found it is proof of an intelligent originator. This is why a pilot flying over a deserted beach could immediately recognize a message for help spelled out in the alignment of rocks on the beach even if he did not know the language in which the message was formed. The pattern itself would be immediately recognizable as having an intelligent source.

The series of simple repeated patterns emitted by rapidly rotating stars (quasars) is not evidence of intelligence because the sequence is too regular and contains no information. Random non-repeating patterns are merely noise and are also not evidence of intelligent origin. It is only when there is a complex pattern with occasionally repeated segments that an intelligent originator must have been involved. If such a pattern coming from outer space were to be discovered; it would be proof that we are not alone in our universe.

The primary motivation for the effort to find this pattern coming from a source outside of our solar system is philosophic and not scientific. If evidence of other life forms was found; it would be heralded as proof that life had developed elsewhere. In other words, given the right conditions... life could pop up anywhere. Yet, there is not a single shred of evidence that life exists anywhere else in the physical universe. Since the effort is philosophically rather than scientifically motivated, negative results seldom change the motivation or beliefs of the experimenters.

The same individuals who are willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to find such a pattern in electromagnetic signals from space are unwilling to acknowledge that the same type of complex pattern, found in all living cells, came from an intelligent source. In our search for intelligent extra-terrestrial life, why don’t we take our eyes off the telescope and put them on the microscope? Inside every living organism is a marvelous blueprint for life known as the DNA molecule. Guess what this organic molecule contains? A complex pattern with occasionally repeated segments which could not be generated by a formula or a natural cause! This is the same type of evidence which scientists would immediately accept as proof of intelligent origin - if it was found coming from outer space.

Why isn’t the coded sequence of the DNA molecule heralded as evidence of intelligent origin? Can it be that many scientists are blind to the evidence for supernatural design because they have been trained to believe that an intelligent, creator God cannot be considered? Does peer pressure from the scientific community stop the open acknowledgment of this obvious evidence for the divine origin of biological life? Furthermore, as knowledge of our universe increases, do we have more or less reason to believe in its supernatural origin?

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Miracle Medical Insurance

By RC

Over the last six years of doing full-time missionary work, I’ve seen Jesus do amazing miracles to provide, guide, and protect me.

A friend asked me recently what my biggest leap of faith had been to date. It was hard to pick a certain moment, as I’ve come to see that every time Jesus presents a challenge and through faith I overcome, He “upgrades” me; the next challenge is a little harder and more faith is required. In that way my faith is always growing.

But there was one time that I can say was a definite turning point in my life of faith. I was 18 years old and on my way to Ethiopia with another missionary friend. Neither of us had been there before, I had never been to Africa period. So I felt rather uncertain. We landed in Frankfurt, Germany, and on arrival at the train station, we started talking to two people who turned out to be from Ethiopia. They introduced us to their churchand the locals there. We didn’t have any finances for the tickets, and the deadline for the flight was getting closer as the days passed.

For a couple of days prior I had been experiencing odd twinges in the right side of my stomach. The twinges quickly turned into sharp, stabbing pain, but up till that point I had never been really sick before and so I ignored it. Early one morning, the day before our departure, I woke up with a start; nothing had woken me, but something wasn’t right. I stood up and blacked out.

When I woke up a few minutes later, the pain was unimaginable. My friend had woken to me falling on the floor and wasn’t sure what the problem was. At the hospital, after hours of the doctors trying to figure out what was wrong, they discovered I had ovarian cysts and that two large ones had ruptured, causing internal bleeding.

The doctors explained that I would need an operation immediately, and to please give my insurance details. I didn’t have any. I was young, a new missionary, and honestly had never thought about insurance. One doctor got very upset and explained in detail that this operation could cost up to 15,000 euros and that it had to be paid. “What are you going to do?” When I started to hesitantly say that I believed God could do a miracle, he just laughed.

I was scared, and in the back of my mind was this voice saying, “This is a punishment for the things you’ve done wrong. If you really had faith, this wouldn’t have happened.” They wouldn’t let my friend in, so I lay there asking myself, “What will I do? What will I do?” An angel, in the form of a nurse, came in just then and said, “Don’t think about the money. You belong to God. If you can’t have faith in anything else, trust in His love.”

I decided to go ahead with the operation, and found out later that my friends who were doing projects throughout Europe and Africa were having hourly prayer vigil and were already seeing how they could pay for the operation. The days after the operation were rough. The rules would not allow my friend to visit much, but what was really eating at me was that I should have been in Ethiopia by then.

Just a few months prior I had dedicated my life to Jesus and serving Him, but before that I had been as far away from the life of faith as was possible. How the heck am I going to pay for the operation? Is this a punishment? Why did it happen?

During this time another lady was put in the same room as me, and I could hear her talking to her daughter, saying, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to face God’s punishments. What will happen to my family ... and why is God allowing this?” She was speaking in Turkish, and while I’m by no means fluent, I understood what she was saying.

I started to speak to her through her daughter, who spoke English. I told them about God’s love and how perfect it is. How God allows suffering so that we can better understand His love and grow closer to Him. I started to find the answers to the very same fears and doubts that I had been struggling with as I spoke to her.

She was dying of cancer of the intestines, and although they were going to try to operate, there was only a 30% chance of success. The day before I was released from the hospital, she called me over and said, “In the Koran, Jesus is called the Healer. I have heard you pray to Him. Please pray now for my life.” Her whole family was standing there with such expectant faith. I don’t remember the prayer or what I said, but I was so desperate for Jesus to do something and honor their faith.

The next day I was released and told to stay in bed and rest for two weeks. The only problem was that I had nowhere to go. I was issued a paper saying I had to report to the hospital with how I was going to pay the bill within a month’s period. I walked to the entrance of the hospital and sat down and started to pray.

About two hours later I heard my name being shouted. I turned around to see the daughter of the Turkish woman who had gone for the operation. “It’s a miracle! The miracle from God,” she was saying over and over. She explained that just before the operation the doctors decided to do one more scan. The cancer had wrapped itself all around her intestines. But the scan showed something completely different. All of the cancer was gone, except for a small bit right on top. The operation took very little time and she was fine. The doctors said they had never seen anything like it happen before—it was a miracle.

I stayed with that family for two weeks, and during that time each of them asked questions about God’s love and Jesus’ power to heal. During that time the father, mother, and daughter asked Jesus to come into their hearts and change their lives.

What happened to the miracle needed for the hospital bill? Well, on the second week, with shaking knees but a greater faith that Jesus would work it out, I went to the hospital, told them my name, and waited for the secretaries to call me. Finally one lady called me into the office. She looked at me with a confused look and then looked back at the file. Finally she asked me for my date of birth and birthplace. I told her, and she shook her head. For 40 long minutes she rattled on her keyboard, made calls, and got more and more angry and frustrated.

Finally she threw the file down and said, “Bah! There is no real record of your having even been here.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, as she continued, “There was a woman here with the same name as you, but according to our files she was 76 years old, had inflammation of the joints, and was covered by our medical insurance policy. We cannot charge you if there is no record of you even existing. You can go!”

I stumbled out of that office hardly believing that Jesus with His wonderful sense of humor had taken my medical file and replaced it with that of a 76-year-old lady. When I went back to the house of my friends and told them what had happened, the mother called the hospital to make sure. It was as the secretary had said: they couldn’t find a single trace of paperwork that I had ever been in the hospital. “And to us Germans, if it’s not on paper, then it hasn’t happened.”

Before that miracle, I had always thought that miracles came to those that were more spiritual, to someone who was very close to Jesus. During this time I didn’t feel very full of faith at all. In fact, I was at my lowest point—just struggling to trust that Jesus loved me.

Remembering this experience helps me so much when I’m facing impossible situations and feel like I don’t have what it takes to receive a miracle. Since then the miracles I’ve experienced have always happened when I stopped trying to use my “common sense” and simply told Jesus I needed Him and Him alone, and then immediately followed whatever He said.

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A Evolução do ADN é Possível?

A Evolução do DNA é Possível? from Dennis Molinski

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Is it a Bird..a Fish...or a Mammal?

Loons have been documented diving 200 feet under the water and swimming with the agility of a fish. Indoctrination from our school, museum, and media system presents such abilities as having evolved over time by some natural mechanism. Believers in evolution provide only a superficial explanation for such specialized abilities, while totally ignoring the problems posed by such speculation. To see this dichotomy more clearly, let’s examine in detail just one remarkable characteristic of the common loon.

The loon is the only bird that has solid bones similar to a mammal. Bones form the framework of bodies upon which the muscles, ligaments, and other tissue have a place to anchor and function. In animals, other than birds, bones are the densest and the mechanically strongest parts of the body. However, in birds, the bones have been designed hollow in order to reduce the overall weight of the bird, allowing it to fly while expending the least possible energy. The bones of birds, while remarkably strong for their weight, are less dense than surrounding tissue and can actually float on water -- except for the bones of a loon. It turns out that the loon has solid bones like mammals, rather than hollow bones like all other birds. Why is this and how could it have happened?

Every part of the loon is designed for it to function perfectly as a deep water diver. Its relatively small wings allow quick movement and direction changes under water. Its large webbed feet allow it to not only propel itself underwater, but to run on top of the water for assisted take-offs. And most importantly, its solid bones give it low enough buoyancy so it can rapidly descend to great depths when searching for fish. Other water birds such as ducks and swans, ride high in the water due to their hollow bones, but they cannot dive deep in search of fish. If the loon had hollow bones; diving deep would be as difficult as SCUBA diving with an inflated life vest.

Believers in evolution would argue that the loon developed its solid bones over time as small changes in DNA gave some pre-loon type bird increasingly denser bones resulting in the advantage of being able to dive deeper. This sounds logical, BUT the problems with such a scenario have been ignored. First, the whole idea of a bone slowly changing from hollow to solid is just story telling. There is no fossil or factual evidence to suggest it ever happened. Similar storytelling is repeatedly presented as science by evolutionary believers as they talk about their faith. Second, the structure of the two types of bone is completely different and involves a totally unique DNA sequence. Expecting random changes in the DNA code to change one type of bone to another would be like a cardboard factory suddenly turning out solid lumber due to random changes over time in the fiber processing machinery. It could simply never ever happen. Finally, the bone structure supports the surrounding tissue. Not only would the bones have to change, all the DNA code for each of the surrounding tissues, ligaments, muscle types, and blood generation apparatus within the bones would have to change simultaneously and function perfectly while the bones themselves were transforming from hollow to solid. Upon close examination the whole concept of slow change over time is preposterous.

If students were given all of this information, when presented with the unique features of an individual organism, and were then asked to ponder the relevant question - how did this organism develop its unique features? – they would be far more likely to discover the truth.

Only two possibilities exist -- the DNA information was programmed by a designer (creation) or this information developed by random mutational changes (evolution). The reason this choice of possibilities is not presented to students is that they would invariably choose creation - leaving naturalistic scientists with no followers. Furthermore, these same students would be far more likely to place the reality of God’s existence at the center of every other choice they face in life.

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A Blast From the Past: The Non-Aligned Movement

By Eric Margolis, September 03, 2012
This week’s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference in Tehran brought nostalgic memories of the Cold War and world-bestriding leaders like Nehru, Nasser, Castro, Nkrumah, and Sukarno. Most of them were disasters for their nations, but they certainly were colorful and interesting.

In spite of intense efforts by the US and Israel to deter attendance at the Tehran meeting—backed by a wave of western media attacks on the conclave—over 150 nations and international bodies attended.

This big turnout marked a major failure by Washington to further tighten its siege of Iran. Of particular note was the presence of India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh. India refused to bow to US pressure to boycott the event and announced future energy, trade and transport deals with Tehran.

Iran plays a key role in India’s plans to expand its influence over Afghanistan and Central Asia. India is building a new, strategic rail line linking the Iranian port of Chahbahar to western Afghanistan. Iran supplies over 11% of India’s fast-growing demand for energy. Delhi increasingly worries about the security of its Mideast energy imports.

As I wrote a decade ago in my first book, War at the Top of the World, the US and India may one day become rivals for Mideast oil and gas resources—and, indeed, for control of the Gulf. India’s refusal to go along with US policy further underlines the gradual shift to Asia of the world’s center of strategic and economic gravity.

To Washington’s further annoyance, Egypt’s new president, Mohammed Morsi, shrugged off threats of a cut in US aid and flew to Tehran. Under the 30-year Mubarak dictatorship, Egypt had been a bulwark against Iran. But no more. The increasingly assertive, independent Morsi made clear that Egypt would follow its own foreign policy interests rather than those of the US and Israel, as in the past.

Morsi has surprised just about everyone. When he stumbled into power earlier this year he was regarded as a plodding nobody, selected by the all-powerful military to do its bidding and not make trouble. The Muslim Brotherhood leader, a former space engineer, threw off his cloak of humility and quickly proceeded to muzzle Egypt’s bullying US-backed military, the key to US domination of Egypt for the past 40 years.

How Morsi pulled this off without facing a military coup remains a mystery. But he certainly had the backing of most Egyptians. It took Turkey’s Islamist Lite government a decade to push the swaggering generals back to their barracks and bring real democracy.

The Egyptian leader stunned everyone by openly blasting the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, calling for its replacement by an elected, democratic government. Egyptian intervention in the bloody Syrian conflict may help pave a way to a peaceful settlement. It could also rekindle ancient Egyptian-Syrian rivalry for leadership of the Arab world.

In spite of issuing dulcet banalities about Egypt’s turn to democracy, Washington is extremely unhappy with Egypt’s newly elected government. Egypt will no longer be a discreet defender and ally of Israel, as under Mubarak, but a rival power that genuinely demands a Palestinian state and sees no reason to confront Iran or other US foes.

The US is responding to Egypt’s newfound independence by muttering about cuts to its annual $1.3 billion donations to Egypt’s military and millions more in secret payments. However, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are lending cash-strapped Cairo $3 billion and the US-run IMF another $4.8 billion in loans. Interestingly, President Morsi just visited China where he received pledges of aid.

In past years, most non-aligned conferences, whose objective was to find a middle way between the West and Soviet Empire, produced only hot air, often quite anti-American. As America’s world power declines after the loss of two wars and deep recession, the NAM meeting in Tehran may be a step, albeit small, towards moving away from today’s unipolar world towards a more balanced, equitable international system.

Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei loosed a Parthian Shaft at the summit’s end. He called the United Nations Security Council outdated, unbalanced, and an instrument of the western powers. Khamenei called for a major reform of the world institution. Few delegates disagreed with him.

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Nick Vujicic on Why God Made Him Limbless

Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post, Sep. 03, 2012
Evangelist Nick Vujicic, who spoke at Saddleback Church in Calif. on Sunday, was born with neither arms nor legs, and questioned God for eight years why it was so. The answer changed his life, and through him that of tens of thousands of others.

For the now 30-year-old Nick, founding president and CEO of the nonprofit organization Life Without Limbs, the most important thing in life was to understand why God made him without arms and legs.

Speaking at Pastor Rick Warren’s church in Lake Forest on Sunday evening, the inspirational speaker said he spent eight years asking God, “Why? Why was I born this way? I don’t understand how can You say You love me when You allow me to stay in this pain.”

Vujicic, who has been living in California since 2007, was born in Brisbane, Australia. His parents—Pastor Boris Vujicic and nurse Dushka Vujicic—were not given any medical explanation or warning about his birth with neither arms nor legs. But Nick got the answer to his desperate prayers.

John 9:1-3 spoke to him in a special way. The New Testament portion reads: “As he (Jesus) went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’”

The Life Without Limbs author described his feelings after reading these verses. “I got goosebumps on my skin I don’t even have,” he told the congregants. “And I had faith because I understood something. You see, all I wanted to know was that God knew what He was doing with me.”

By the age of 19, Nick started to fulfill his dream of being able to encourage other people and bring them the Gospel of Jesus through motivational speaking and sharing his testimony about how God changed his life and gave him a future and a hope.

The desire to have arms and legs has remained, Vujicic admitted. Initially, he thought, “Lord, if you give me arms and legs, I’ll go around the world and share your power with the world.” He said he still has ups and downs in life. “I am just like you.”

Vujicic said he has failed God every single day, but has relied on Philippians 1:6: “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Vujicic recalled he and dozens of his Christian friends once prayed for 90 minutes for his arms and legs in a farm in a jungle in India. They made arms and legs with clay, and prayed it turn into flesh and bone. It didn’t happen, but he had peace in his heart as he saw an eagle soaring in the sky throughout those 90 minutes. He said it was as if God was smiling, and was happy he had the faith to pray.

“Please give me arms and legs. But if You don’t give me arms and legs, I trust You.” This has been Vujicic’s prayer. He said his commitment to Jesus is “to want His plan, and not my plan … even when I don’t understand.”

You are praying for something, but what if God says “no” to that? he asked. “Is He still God? Yes. Will He waste your pain? No.” He quoted Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Vujicic, who has traveled around the world, sharing his story with millions of people, said he’s grateful to God for saving him from the two biggest disabilities: sin and death.

He said when he was 10 he wanted to commit suicide, and wanted to see someone like him so that he wouldn’t be alone. Five years ago in California, he finally met a baby named Daniel, who too was born without arms and legs … “exactly like me.” “Not getting a miracle, I can be a miracle to Daniel … an older brother of Daniel his whole life … encourage him.”

Nick said if he truly lived without arms and legs throughout his life “just so I can hug Daniel in heaven, it’s all worth it.”

“I found the purpose of my existence, and also the purpose of my circumstance. There’s a purpose for why you’re in the fire,” he says on his ministry’s website. “If God can use a man without arms and legs to be His hands and feet, then He will certainly use any willing heart!”

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O Catolicismo Romano e o Livro de Gênesis

O catolicismo romano e o livro de génesis from Dennis Molinski

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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?

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Como funcionam os métodos de datação

Como funcionam os métodos de datação from Dennis Molinski

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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.

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