Monday, February 20, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
Decepiton and new discoveries about evolution
By Ada Brownell
Excerpt from Imagine the Future You
Chapter 8
Imagine the Creator of the Universe Loving you
Do you believe the Bible? The first says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Genesis 1:1.
It's an argument that is only settled by faith. Neither atheists can prove what they believe, and neither can those who believe in a supernatural creator--God. The reason you can't prove God exists is because faith is necessary for salvation. The reason atheists can't prove everything created itself is because it's not true. The evidence is still missing after about a century and a half since Darwin. Any species that shows changes is still the same species. Evolution is taught as fact only because it's so widely accepted.
IMAGINE DECEPTION
In the camp of atheism, we even have deception. Among
attempts to “prove” evolution, we have the Piltdown Man, which for forty years
was acclaimed as the “missing evolutionary link.” In 1952 it was proved to be a
hoax designed by Charles Dawson. The skull actually was the cranium of a man
and the jaw of an ape. The specimen was believed to be a million years old
before it was discovered to be a fraud. The teeth had been filed and stained to
suggest age.
Among other attempted deceptions was the Solid Muldoon,
which appeared to be a petrified giant with a tail about three inches long at
the base of the spine. The figure was dug up in 1877 near Pueblo, Colorado.
The Solid Muldoon was exhibited by W. A. Conant, the
“discoverer,” and George Hull, who planned to show the figure with P. T.
Barnum, the showman. But scientists were skeptical because Hull exhibited
another “petrified man” known as the Cardiff Giant. Hull later confessed he and
a stonecutter carved the “giant” out of stone and buried it for “discovery.”
Hull finally admitted that, in an attempt to make the Solid
Muldoon appear authentic, he made it from pulverized stone and bones, clay,
blood, plaster, and dried eggs. He pounded the “skin” with a needle-studded
mallet to give it “pores.” Then it was fired in a kiln for two weeks.
Now, even a person who rejects evolution must admit there
are few blatant deceptions such as these in the scientific realm today. But
that is not to say you can rest your future and eternal destiny on science.
IMAGINE NEW EVIDENCE
New evidence makes it necessary to continually revise the
theory of evolution. In fact, according to US
News and World Report, the theory is radically being revised.[1]
An article several years ago by William F. Allman says, “The
branches of the human family tree are being given a thorough shaking.”
One of the recent shakings, Allman said, concerns Lucy, a
primate thought by evolutionists to walk upright and represent the oldest known
human ancestor. But he said a number of distinct creatures, and possibly ten
different species of upright, large-brained ape-like creatures, have been
discovered, changing thought about Lucy’s species being the evolutionary link. Some
creationists discount Lucy entirely because pygmy chimps wander about upright
much of the time in rain forests today.
One of the most hotly debated issues among experts on human
origins concerns Neanderthals—stocky, primitive hominids thought to be a direct
ancestor of modern humans.
Researchers recently recovered DNA from a Neanderthal fossil
and decoded it to see how closely it resembles human DNA. The Neanderthal DNA
differed from human DNA in twenty-seven places, while human DNA differs from
person to person by an average of just eight variations in genetic sequence.[2]
The author of the article in US News and World Report concluded the DNA tests showed Neanderthal
men died out and were not the ancestors of modern humans.
The “prehistoric” models used by evolutionists also are
sometimes built on a very few bones and often rely on artists for fossil
reconstruction. For instance, Science
Magazine showed a half whale and a half land animal on its cover on April
22, 1983, and according to Dave Nutting of the Alpha Omega Institute in Grand
Junction, Colorado, the picture was reconstructed from teeth, a small fragment
of the jaw, and one bone at the back of the skull.[3]
[1]
William F. Allman, “A Family Legacy for Lucy,” US News & World Report, April 11, 1994, 55.
[2]
Laura Tangley, “Not So Close After All,” US
News and World Report, July 21, 1997, 9.
[3]
Pueblo Chieftain, Pueblo, CO, Jan.
12, 1991, page 1B; and The Alpha Omega Institute, bulletin, Grand Junction, CO.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
LOVE IS DYNAMITE
By Ada Brownell
***The author's historical romance, The Lady Fugitive, is on sale for .99 through Feb. 12. The Lady Fugitive, 2015 Laurel Award runner-up. Buy: http://ow.ly/QzlIP
I grew up observing love demonstrated among family. One of the most
amazing was a relative who was a new Christian, and she showed love to her
husband beyond what I, even as a child, thought was necessary.
Her husband, with training in the
finer etiquettes of his heritage, expected men to be served before women.
My aunt, who I know had some fire
somewhere in her bones, acted as if she were made to serve her husband, and she
did it with joy. We were guests at their home after church one Sunday and boys
near my age were allowed to eat with the men, while I remember thinking I would
starve before girls and women were served.
I don’t
think my aunt was so subservient before she became a Christian, but she did
what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7, 13:14: “And the woman which hath an
husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not
leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the
unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.” As
the years passed, my uncle accepted the Lord and treated his wife with kindness
and respect. Not many years before he died, he sang his wife’s praises and
wasn’t afraid to tell others about what a great woman she was. No longer did the
men eat alone, but sat at the table enjoying the chatter of ladies.
My idea
when he was such a pompous husband would be to “throw the bum out.” But God has
better ways.
I’ve
thought of Jesus when John the Baptist was beheaded. John was a relative and
close friend. He baptized Jesus. Now the earthlings Jesus had come to save not
only killed John, but brought his head on a platter.
No
wonder when the disciples brought the news, Jesus immediately jumped on a ship
and went to a desert place. He knew humankind could be cruel, but I imagine it
was different when he took on human flesh to be one of us.
I’d have
said, “Father, they’re too wicked. Let’s forget the whole redemption plan.”
Instead,
when Jesus saw a crowd followed him to the desert, He had compassion on them
and healed the sick. That evening he fed the multitude with five loaves and two
fish. When the disciples departed in a boat the night, a storm blew in. Jesus
walked on water, calmed the seas, and even invited Peter to step out onto the
liquid.
What
love is that? The type He asks us to strive for.
How can I be a more loving person? Start with obeying Jesus who said, "Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all they mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. ON these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40 KJ).
Love is explained
in 1 Corinthians 13-3-5NLT: “If I gave everything I have to the poor and
even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I
would be of no value whatsoever. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or
rude. Love does not demand its
own way.”
We're also told, “Let the faith and love of Christ Jesus be
your model” from 2 Timothy 1:13 CEV.
When we
study the Word we learn love is as powerful as dynamite and will take us
through life more easily, just as dynamite can open a highway tunnel through a
mountain. Used in the wrong way because of jealousy or other sinful motives, love can be destructive.
Love is
important to our happiness, both the love we receive and the love we
give. God loves us no matter what, and
some people love us because God put it in their hearts. But to be a complete,
we must return that love and put love into action.
The
greatest love of all is God’s love for us: “For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life” (John 3:16).
When Jesus gave His life for us so we could have forgiveness of sins and live forever in heaven, that was the greatest gift of love ever given. What a gift! Better than any Valentine's gift ever given.
© Ada Brownell
ADA'S HISTORICAL ROMANCES ARE ABOUT LOVE, BUT ALSO SUSPENSE
Ada Brownell has
been writing for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life
as a daily newspaper reporter. She has a B.S. degree in Mass Communications and
worked most of her career at The Pueblo
Chieftain in Colorado where she spent the last seven years as a medical
writer. After moving to Springfield, MO in her retirement, she continues to
freelance for Christian publications and write non-fiction and fiction books.
She is author of Peach Blossom Rancher, released By Elk
Lake Publishing in 2016; The Lady
Fugitive, Elk Lake 2014; Joe the
Dreamer: The Castle and the Catapult, 2013; Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death,
Resurrection and the Eternal, 2011; Imagine
the Future You, released 2013; and Confessions
of a Pentecostal, Radiant Books, out-of-print but released in 2012 for
Kindle;. All the books are available
in paper or for Kindle. Imagine the Future You also is an Audio Book.
Buy
Peach blossom rancher here: http://ow.ly/4ETL302QdhW
Twitter: @adabrownell
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
GOD AT CREATION: HOW DID YOU GET HERE?
By Ada Brownell
Excerpt from the book, Imagine the Future You
Paperback, e-book, or audible
Paperback, e-book, or audible
IMAGINE HOW YOU GOT HERE
Now, some Christians do believe in evolution—but with God
starting the process. But those who believe in God don’t believe the universe
or the magnificent human body happened by itself.
Most secular professors and teachers will not hesitate to
tell you what to believe and not believe about your origins, but even
scientists disagree.
One of the most interesting debates on evolution occurred in
October 1980, when 150 scientists met in Chicago and began openly bickering
among themselves, thundering forth conflicting theories.
Some scientists at this conference promulgated the “big bang” theory.[1]
This theory, obviously not the TV show, contends that instead of millions of
leisurely evolutionary years, the world began all at once, Bang!, in a
great galactic explosion of atoms and enzymes.
Darwin’s theory also came under attack from
scientists—because missing links are still missing after more than a century
since Darwin.
“Fossil hunters have not found the fossils needed to explain
the glaring differences between major species,” Associated Press newspaper
columnist Hugh A. Mulligan reported. “In the whole cycle of environmental
selection, with all the genes and embryos playing splitsville according to the
evolutionary plan, no six-legged vertebrate has yet walked forth upon the
earth.”
Science has provided few or none of the examples of one
major species shading gradually into another.
Fossil experts, not clergymen, are Darwin’s most formidable
opponents, according to Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial.[2]
Although Darwin’s theory revolved around survival of the fittest,
paleontologists often disagree with Darwin because appearance of an improved
form implies a disadvantage of its parent form. Many supposed parent forms
still survive, and the missing links just aren’t there, even though they’ve
been searched for since 1859, when Darwin wrote Origin of the Species.
“There always will be missing links if we think in terms of
link between all change,” a university anthropologist argued when I interviewed
him. He said changes in Darwin’s theory have occurred, the most recent the
theory of “punctuated equilibrium,” which he explained relates to the time
taken for one species to shade into another.
“A form which had been a small variant, might have great
rapid growth,” he said.
He used the doubling of chromosomes in some species as an
example of radical change in a short period.
On the other hand, he admitted such doubling could be caused
by the environment and also that most mutations are undesirable rather than
desirable.
He used a fruit fly as an example of a species with a short
life span where such changes in chromosomes could be observed. But he admitted
the insect still was a fruit fly.
“It is very difficult for an average scientist to test
evolution,” he said. “Our lives are too short and the research too specialized.
The theory is the result of collective effort.”
IMAGINE OUTDATED TEXTBOOKS
One psychology professor openly ridiculed Christians in one
of my university classes with more than seventy students. As the instructor
made sarcastic remarks about Christians in the news and preached his atheistic
ideas, I wondered why no one challenged him. One day I raised my hand.
“You said this
textbook will be outdated in ten years,” I began. “So what you are saying today
might not be true in ten years?”
The questions flowed.
“Can you prove evolution? Isn’t it true you accept it by
faith? Are you aware that many scientists have thrown out missing links because
they couldn’t find them? Did you know scientists are even putting forth the
idea that man might have fallen from outer space?
“How did creation turn out so perfectly without a Designer?
Why aren’t monkeys turning into humans now?”
He admitted that, yes, the textbooks and the theories and
knowledge in them would soon be outdated; that he didn’t have all the answers;
and, “Yes, we do accept some things by faith. But when something is universally
accepted, we treat it as fact.”
I should have asked, “Then because the God of creation and
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are universally accepted, that should be
treated as fact?”
A few weeks later, I asked a science teacher if the first
and second laws of thermodynamics violated evolution. The teacher had opened
the class on the environment by stating everything would be based on evolution.
No more than thirty-five pages into the text, Living in the Environment, by G. Tyler
Miller Jr., the class was studying the law of energy degradation, also known as
the second law of thermodynamics. The law states that matter, if left to itself
and undergoing physical or chemical changes, will always change in the
direction of decreased order and decreased energy content. The entire
universe obeys this law, and this includes every chemical reaction.
In words plain and simple, the law means anything left to
itself will slowly fall apart. Every time you see an old barn with the roof
sagging and the walls falling in, you see demonstration of this law. Despite
galaxies thought to be expanding (are they expanding, or are we increasing our
knowledge?), scientists will tell you the entire universe is slowing down,
growing old, and, as the saying goes, is running out of steam.
The second energy law also tells us energy tends to flow or
change spontaneously from a compact and ordered form to a dispersed and random,
or disordered, form.
“No one has ever found a violation of this law,” Miller
states.[3]
When the teacher read that, I put up my hand. “Isn’t
evolution a violation of this law?”
In order for evolution to occur, many complex chemical
changes must take place, and they must all be in the direction of increased
order and energy to move from the simple to the complex.
The teacher paused a moment, cleared his throat, and said,
“Well, evolution is the only violation.”
The theory of evolution also violates the first law of
thermodynamics, which simply says energy (or matter) neither can be created nor
destroyed.
A story goes that God and Satan were having a discussion.
“I can do anything you can,” Satan said, stretching his puny
body so he looked taller.
God smiled. “OK. Make a man.”
Satan bent over and began scraping up dirt.
God grabbed his shoulder. “Use your own dirt.”
[1]
Charles Percival, Pueblo Chieftain,
Aug. 9, 1992, page 6B.
[2] Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 1993), 45.
[3] G. Tyler Miller Jr., Living in the Environment (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Co.), 34–43.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Four ideas about God at Creation
By Ada Brownell
An excerpt from Ada Brownell's book, Imagine the Future You
Also available in Audio. Read
or listen to first chapter free! #Teens #Family #Devotions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What do you believe?
Did it take millions of years for our All Powerful God to create the earth and everything else in the universe?
Here are four different ideas about the days of creation from Bible scholars.
Twenty-four Days of Re-creation:
The belief there was a creation before Adam that was somehow destroyed. (This
idea leaves a gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.)
Age-Long Days of
Creation: The belief that creation occurred over six different ages
that could have been thousands of years in length.
Revelatory Days of Creation: The
idea that the days had nothing to do with creation but with the amount of time
God took giving Moses, the writer of the Book of Genesis, information about
creation.
Twenty-four-hour
days of creation: The belief
that God literally created the Earth and all that is in it in six
twenty-four-hour days, as we know days.
So when Genesis says, “So the evening and the morning were
the first day,” “The evening and the morning were the second day,” and so forth
until God rested on the seventh day, the length of time can be interpreted
several ways.
One thing that makes me believe in a young Earth is
population. Scientists use the “population J curve” to show exponential growth
of the number of humans. The “J curve” is any system that grows by doubling—one,
two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, etc., or geometric growth.
Experts estimate the world’s population was two hundred
million in 1 AD and population continued to double and double until 1850—the
curve of the J— when eight hundred million people lived on the Earth. Estimates
and censuses showed two billion by 1930, three billion in 1960, four billion in
1976, five billion in 1990, six billion in 2002, and an estimated seven billion
in 2011.
It took nearly two thousand years to quadruple the number of
people from the time Jesus walked the earth but only eighty years for the
population to grow from one to two billion between 1850 and 1930 and twelve
years to grow a billion between 1990 and 2002. The US Census Bureau estimated
the world population to be 7.073 billion in 2012.
This increase is
despite diebacks because of disease and epidemics, natural catastrophes, and
wars. In my mind, there is no way man could have been here millions of years.
Again, science uses millions of years to make evolution seem plausible because
we can’t see any evidence for it in a lifetime of one hundred years.
But the length of
time that it took to create the Earth is not exceedingly important. What is
important is that we know and believe Genesis 1:1, that “in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth.”
The whole world’s scientific thought constantly changes and
often contradicts what scientists thought was solid evidence. On the other
hand, the Creator and his witness never change and will never be outdated.
Imagine the Future You goes into detail about evidence for belief in God, and also evidence and even fraud such as the Piltdown Man designed to prove evolution.
As a Bible student, youth Christian education teacher and newspaper reporter, I've interviewed experts on both sides of the argument. Imagine the Future You, has details about some of those interviews.
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