If you believe in evolution then you need to learn biology…

I never cease to be amazed at how supposed intelligent rational thinking scientists forever put that intelligence & rationality in their back pocket when it comes to the subject of creation.  Why do they prefer to consider that mankind “evolved” from apes & monkeys (& all the way back to single-celled organisms) rather than consider we are created by an awesome God?  They twitter on about all the “evidence” for evolution and throw out crazy figures like 150 million years ago in the hope that the more they bandy about such terms the more society will accept them, & sadly, for the most part, they’re right.  Too many nowadays prefer to get their “truth” from television & biased BBC programs rather than actually investigate any alternative, lest it point them in a direction they truly do not wish to ever go.

But there is indeed evidence in abundance in every single living creation on the planet to prove their theories are wrong, yet when faced with it, they just shout all the louder that they are right, & creationists are so very wrong.  But I have no concerns of their erroneous position ever actually becoming the right one, as while they can warble on endlessly about fossils, carbon dating & other things they insist point to evolution, I just sit back & throw out one word which they really can’t deal with as it invariably throws 90% of their arguments out the window.  And that one word – DNA.  Yep, the basic building block of life – the life that evolutionists insist had to start out as nothing & then become something without any Divine input!!  Yet without DNA no life can exist and not just DNA but its counterpart – Messenger RNA.  You can’t have one without the other, & both are arguably the most complex protein molecules on the planet.  But we’re expected to believe that somehow time & little else produced DNA as well as everything else.   But the evolutionists neatly sidestep that whole thorny topic of how DNA came into being given it’s a zillion times more complex in itself than the first organism in the chain that’s supposed to somehow end up with mankind!!!  However, even an article in Evolution News & Views alludes to the design in mRNA as well as throwing out another long-famed argument of evolutionists – that of “junk DNA/RNA”.  It also accepts the enormous complexity involved in just a single 4-amino acid sequence coming into being and how mRNA is considered even more complex than DNA due to its dual role in DNA production.  For life to be formed from all the materials we have available to us from scratch, we would have to engineer or design it to function, and that’s the whole point. Life has the appearance of being engineered, and points in the direction of a Designer & one with a rather exceptionally higher level of intelligence than us!!

But the evolutionists, utterly intent & locked into their worldview, continue to just consider all of this information, while bothersome, to be just another thing that the passage of time will sort out, & in their view prove their hypothesis.  In other words, no amount of alternative evidence, regardless of how concrete will ever convince them otherwise, because they’ve all too much to lose, from credibility through to major investment in research projects & employment etc.   Sadly it’s a flaw of human nature that sometimes when we fix our worldview & opinions in one direction, few are willing to truly consider any objections to it lest they prove right, & then huge decisions will have to be made which may change lives.

But even if you’re dead set on accepting evolution as a worldview I’d still suggest you consider your reasons why!  Is it because you’ve just accepted all you’ve heard about it and figure it makes sense to you – in that case I’d suggest you go and spend a bit of time doing some more meaningful research into your opinion before fixing it.   Or perhaps you’ve spent most of your life pursuing the evolutionary aspect and thus to ever consider it errant or faulty, would be to have to accept you’ve wasted most of your life, & maybe face criticism & ridicule should you change your views now?  I would just ask – what’s worse – continuing to live in ignorance & accept something that even on the most basic level is utterly flawed, or seek out the more plausible reason for everything you know – a Person Who can provide more than just answers to creation questions, but answers to sin questions etc too.  Or is it because you really don’t want to consider a Creator God just might be real and if you accept He created everything, then other things you don’t want to accept might just be true too?   Then you do have a serious dilemma – ultimately whether you accept evolution or not as a worldview isn’t going to kill you, but denying God & ultimately the existence of Jesus absolutely will, not just in this lifetime but eternally!   It’s far more important that you get to know the Saviour of the world Who will determine your eternal future, & in doing so, you’ll also find a lot of your creation/evolution questions answered along the way.   Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth, & the Life, & only in Him can you find real life both here & eternally.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”   John 14:6

“…..but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel….”    2 Timothy 1:10

If you are in a position of genuine desire to know all angles of the issue, and you’ve heard all the evolutionary “evidence”, then please consider spending some time hearing this mini-documentary on the John Ankerberg show a while back – The DNA enigma.  It might not provide all the refutation possible, but will go a long way to countering much of the error pushed out from the evolutionary camp, and from a Christian point of view.  If, however, you’d prefer a secular scientific approach then you could check out http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/20025768653/of-codes-and-rna but be warned this is a fairly complex topic.

Ultimately, every argument has 2 sides and thus each person has to make their choice on which side they will stand, but at least ensure that you’re standing on a side you’ve comfortably researched until convinced of its worth, rather than just standing on a viewpoint because it’s where your peers are or others you respect, or worse, because you’re just too lazy to bother finding out the truth of it.

As ever, I welcome comments, but please provide them on the basis of the evidence, & not my writing ability etc!  Thanks.

Which God do you prefer???

Here’s the question:  Which do you prefer – the god of evolution who uses random chance, chaos and unpredictability, oh and billions of years to bring life to where it is today, OR the God of creation Who took only 6 days to create EVERYTHING in perfect order, perfect symmetry and Who has immense complete knowledge of everything down to the tiniest atom or the largest galaxy.  The god of evolution which can’t explain how DNA came into being, and who at times actually denies that DNA was involved in the earliest life, who makes the story of life into what suits its purposes and ultimately is totally out of the loop and sleeping while life continues to “evolve”!  Or the God of creation Who from the beginning indicated that He was in control of absolutely every nanoatom in His creation, and Who had a purpose at the outset which is still being worked out today, and Who is intimately involved with His creation in a personal way.   A god of chance, or a God in control.   A god who neither cares nor can do anything about the evils of mankind, or the perfect, just and righteous God Who set law and justice into the very fabric of mankind and ensures that while some acts may only see limited human justice here or sometimes apparently none at all, He absolutely will ensure justice will prevail in the world to come.   The god who provides no hint of what its  done or doing so leaves you totally in the dark, or the God Who has provided a complete manual for life from start to end, and says what He means and means what He says.  Who tells you in advance what is going to happen.  He doesn’t necessarily lay it out in the order we think He should, but ensures that only those who’re His followers will be able to discern more accurately what He is planning up ahead.

This is the God Who gave up His (human) life so that we might have our eternal one with Him in heaven, the God Who loves so much He was willing to give up His glory in heaven, come to earth as a babe not a king, and endure all that his creation could throw at Him.  A God Who was willing to become His creation in order to pay a price for its endless rebellion and then to allow His creation to kill Him to fulfill that purpose. The perfect righteous Being Who cannot look on the black sinful souls of men, became sin Himself so that He could take on the punishment we deserve & so cleanse it from humanity to enable His creation to be made spiritually whole again.   You don’t need to know how He can bring that all to pass, just that He can & will.

Your choice!

Where is God in the midst of tragedy??

Right there in the middle of it, and I can state that absolutely and categorically because He is grieving with those who grieve, and perhaps more so because He can see things from both a worldly AND a spiritual perspective, with the repercussions for a life wrongly lived so much more clear to Him than us.   All of us, no matter how strong we may feel our relationship with God is, suffer from a devastating shock when He appears to have suddenly withdrawn His providence from us and instead has thrust us (like Job) into what we consider to be horrific circumstances we feel He should be protecting us from.   Our initial response stems from our errant prideful attitude that just because we have committed our lives to Him that He somehow then owes US!   And that if we are being “good” we shouldn’t have to suffer in any shape or form.  And that sense of entitlement ironically is often escalated in those who rarely give God a second thought in their life.  Many in the privileged West think they’re doing a great job in how they live their lives – they treat others well, jump in where they see injustices (perceived or real) and give regularly to charity.  How’s that not “good” they ask?   Well, in humanistic terms and even in superficial spiritual terms yes, all those things are indeed good and in fact commanded by scripture for those who do know God and are true Christians.

But what many either don’t know or certainly don’t appreciate  is that while those traits are good in human terms God has categorically stated through His Word that nobody is good – not one of us, as we all regardless of our spiritual state continually sin against Him one way or another in thought especially if not in word or deed.   And this is what sin is at its root – a refusal (directly or indirectly) to give God His rightful place in our lives.  And this is why death entered the world – God told Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden or he’d die but then Eve easily accepted the lie of Satan that they wouldn’t die but rather have their eyes opened to good & evil, and so when she didn’t drop dead the minute she ate the fruit, she persuaded Adam to do so too and that, as they say, was that!!  Not only did death enter the world physically but spiritually as well and mankind has paid the price ever since.

But the story didn’t end there as God told Satan that his day would come for his part in man’s downfall – that One would come who would ultimately destroy him and so it was.  Over 2000 years ago, Jesus gave His sinless life as a sacrifice on the cross as a final means of payment to God for ALL of mankinds crimes against Him, past, present & future.  BUT that gift of a reprieve would only be offered to those willing to acknowledge their sinfulness to start with, then repent (tell God they were truly and deeply sorry for their rebellion) and to acknowledge and accept Jesus as their ONLY Redeemer.  It would take too long here to go into all the aspects of salvation if you’ve not encountered them before.  If you do want to read more – check out my other couple of posts on the topic  So you want to go to heaven? WHY????    and  Every nanosecond counts..   Or if you want even more check in the sidebar for the Categories section & click on the Salvation tag.  The point here is that God more than understands the pain of death – He has created us in His likeness which means He has many of the emotions we feel, and one of the primary is grief.  Many times in scripture He says about how sad we’ve made Him or our actions have grieved Him,   We tend to think of Him sometimes being so high & mighty that He never feels anything let alone feels for us in our suffering.  But even more evidence of this is present in Jesus own walk on this earth – we’re told He wept over Lazarus dying and Jesus is God in human flesh so He understands more than anything the pain we feel on losing a loved one.

Then finally God had to allow Jesus to be born into His own creation, live amongst them not as their Creator and King, but rather as a lowly carpenter and itinerant preacher, before allowing His creation to brutally torture Him and kill Him in one of the most unimaginable ways of its time and to hold back the legions of angels just itching to rescue Him, because this is the price He himself had to pay in order to have creation once again made whole.

I appreciate some of the finer points of redemption can sound strange if you have no interest in such or are searching more analytically than spiritiually, but the main point is to just appreciate that God isn’t what man makes Him out to be sometimes.  DIscover the true God in the pages of scripture and learn more about how He loved you enough to die for you!!

2012 – it’s not the Mayan calendar you need to worry about…(Pt 2)

**Please see my earlier post on the same topic from last year.**

For the past 2 years or more, the world has been somewhat fixated on 2012,  as they’ve presumed the ending of the Mayan calendar means the end of the world.   However, many historians have proven how the Mayan calendar only ends in 2012 because the Mayans figured it was as far a date into the future they needed to concern themselves with in the presumption that others after them would continue on the calendar (which of course never happened).  It’s a bit like the early computers which only had dates pre-2000 & which everyone figured equally somehow meant a similar fate to the world when they rolled over into the New Year.

Every nanosecond counts..

This is going to be a really short post and is in response to a search term used which found my blog over the past couple of days but which has ‘haunted’ me since – someone was searching to know “is it too late for me to ask for forgiveness?”!

So just in case anyone else should stumble upon this blog asking the same type of question, let me categorically state here and now – NO – it is NEVER too late for you to ask for forgiveness, but let me also provide you with a shade of clarification on what you need to know.

Many argue about the conscience – what it is and why we have it – no other reason comes anywhere close to providing a measure of reality about it except that which states that God alone provided it to us to reveal to us the fact that we are sinners constantly in a state of sin, but the important thing to know is that it is against God and He alone whom we have sinned, regardless of whether we commit an act of theft, murder, adultery, or even just lustful thoughts – the second you feel guilty you can be sure that it is God’s Law you have broken first and foremost, and until you say sorry to Him and seek His forgiveness (in biblical terms – repent), you will never have true peace in your life.   Man has many measures in place to try and overcome that guilty conscience, but they are all both temporary and temporal (only relevant in worldly terms).  And if you only seek that type of forgiveness (where you’re basically told to forgive yourself and move on), you will eventually run into bigger and much worse problems in your life which may become hugely detrimental, yet which can all be traced back to this one event (or more) where you know you either did something wrong or you were wronged and have never been willing to put aside your own anger/resentment and forgive them first.  And you equally cannot be flippant before God in just firing of a thoughtless “God forgive me” and move on speedily as that absolutely won’t cut it with Him either.

Before you come before God to ask His forgiveness – you should first search your heart and consider have you anyone in your life whom you need to forgive – you don’t need to search them out to do so personally (that may be appropriate later though), but you do need to at least be willing to forgive them in your spirit.   The Lord’s Prayer states this very clearly – “Forgive us our sins as we forgive others who sin against us!”    If you refuse categorically to forgive someone else God will not forgive you.  Once you have done that, then you should sincerely ask Him to have mercy on you, that you recognise that you do nothing to merit His forgiveness, but you accept Jesus has done so on your behalf, through his death on the cross, and ask that God would grant you His forgiveness and grant you salvation for ALL of your sins through Jesus.

If you then accept that Jesus is God Incarnate (made flesh) that He lived, died, & was resurrected on the 3rd day and that He paid the price required of by God for your sins by that death on the Cross, and you are willing to accept Him as your Saviour, then just tell God all of that and know that if you’ve been really sincere about doing so, then God is faithful & just and will forgive you your sins as He has promised and you will have passed from death into life – the “second” birth or being “born again” as it’s termed in Christian circles.  

3 Jesus answered, “I am telling you the truth: no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.” 4 “How can a grown man be born again?” Nicodemus asked. “He certainly cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time!” 5  “I am telling you the truth,” replied Jesus, “that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.  6  A person is born physically of human parents, but is born spiritually of the Spirit.  7  Do not be surprised because I tell you that you must all be born again.  John 3:3-7 

Your place in heaven is guaranteed and you will soon start noticing how your life will change over the coming days & weeks without you having to do anything – God does all the work, which is why the real Christian life as all about faith first, works second, unlike the false faiths which put works first & faith last.

And finally, if you have done that in the recent past, I’d love to hear about it so please take a few moments to comment and encourage those of us who pray for you who are indeed searching or have been in that position recently.

Hear what God says: “When the time came for me to show you favor, I heard you; when the day arrived for me to save you, I helped you.” Listen! This is the hour to receive God’s favor; today is the day to be saved!  2 Corinthians 6:2 

A truly remarkable relationship…

There is one thing that Christianity offers over every other single religion on the planet – well, more than one, but aside from a risen Saviour and forgiveness of sins and a multitude of other vital requirements, our God is the only One with whom we can actually have a relationship!   Unlike the Muslims or the Hindus, Buddhists etc who worship unknown gods and can never be sure if their prayers are even being heard let alone answered, we have a God who actually resides within us through His Holy Spirit and with whom we thus have continual commune.   We have a God who desires to hear His people talk to Him and tell them what He already knows.   And we have a God who absolutely works to help us to hear Him speak to us in a multitude of ways, but especially through our conscience.   How many times you will hear of a Christian who says that they were about to undertake some action, but something stopped them, or they knew instinctively to do something would be wrong.   And I’m not talking the obvious sins here, but more the subtle ones that Paul spoke about when he said that if someone thinks something is wrong, then it is sin for him to do that thing, even if for another person it may not be e.g. eating pork.

So you want to go to heaven? WHY????

This is aimed primarily at those who are not Christians, or who otherwise don’t consider Jesus to be their Saviour and God to be the primary focus of their lives here on earth. However, many who call themselves Christians would do well to read on and equally give thought to some of the points I’m going to raise here.

I suspect that if you asked 100 people whether they wanted to go to heaven or hell, at least 99 of them would sensibly say heaven. But if you asked them why they figured they should be allowed into heaven answers will vary from the sublime to the ridiculous with everything in between, with even some Christians not having a good answer sadly. If you’re one of those, read on as what I’m going to say may make you rethink your reasons.

I imagine most people want to go to heaven because firstly its something ingrained in us since childhood – this idyllic nirvana state we’re brought up to believe is pretty much our right if we are “good” and don’t do “evil.” Many have varying views on what heaven actually is. Most consider it to be a place of rest and/or peace, and some actually do think they’ll spend most of eternity sitting on a cloud somewhere watching the world go by. So lets start by having a little scripture lesson on the reality of the 2 places you could spend eternity in for starters – just so you know exactly what God says they are.

Hell:
It will be full of more people than heaven as Jesus stated that the road was broad (i.e. easier to travel on) that leads to it.
Isa 5:14 Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

There will be angels (or rather demons!) there also:
2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

It is a place of final total and utter destruction with no hope of ever changing your mind:
Mat 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Heaven:
By contrast it’s impossible to find any singular or even just dual verses dealing with heaven – Jesus spoke about it at length in more parables than about any other topic other than salvation itself (Matthew 25 in total, Matt 22:2-13, Matt 20, 1-14 and multiple other instances).

But Revelation 21 provides greater insight to the magnitude of the new Holy Jerusalem and is precisely descriptive. V. 22 is the one most people are alluding to when they talk about “streets paved with gold.”

“And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. “

But over and above those descriptions is the purpose of heaven.  If it was purely a new home for everyone on earth who was good, once again, there would be no need of a Saviour for all would end up there, as there would then also be no reason for hell.  Some people seem to think hell is purely for Satan and his demons forgetting Satan’s role and purpose on this earth – he is the “Prince of the air” and has been given the earth as his domain!! In other words he rules here as is rather evidenced by the increasing propensity for evil even amongst children nowadays.  And his other role is to pull as many people down with him as he can and that’s becoming easier by the year as more people succumb to the “Live your best life now” syndrome rather than concerning themselves with their eternal future.   Heaven is solely for those who have been made worthy of living there, and who desire to live with God and to worship Him alone for eternity.  God created man solely to worship Him, but man determined from the outset he’d rather worship Satan and have his own way, so God has allowed him to do so, but has equally (thankfully) also provided a way back to Him for those who desire to take it. What Adam destroyed, Jesus rebuilt – a relationship with God by faith. There are no “good” people in heaven – only saved sinners.  Even Jesus Himself asked:

“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God” Luke 18:19.

So if you’re one of those who errantly thinks you’re going to get into heaven by merit of your own “goodness” whatever that may mean to you, think again.  Jesus says otherwise:

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matt 7:21-23

And a final thought – if you don’t want to spend your time here worshipping God (90 years perhaps at most) then why on earth would you want to go to heaven where you will do so for eternity???

(Also read:  https://tikkiro.wordpress.com/2007/05/26/rapturitis-if-there-be-such-a-word/
https://tikkiro.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/the-difference-between-paul-washer-joel-osteen/)

The difference between Paul Washer & Joel Osteen…

And trust me there are so many it’s hard to know where to start.    And not often I put out two posts in one week but some things are too important to keep sitting on for too long, and I just heard this tonight – courtesy of Sermon Audio (and Way of the Master Radio) so some of you may already have heard it:

Paul Washer v Joel Osteen

All I can do is plead with any of you who consider Joel Osteen to be good – to remember that what the world deems good is not necessarily what GOD does!   God requires His people who are called by His Name i.e. Christians, to heed His Word over and above the words of men, but also to recognise that the Gospel was paid for by a very high price – the highest possible to be paid – a Life!   Joel Osteen is providing nothing more for his followers than any other good motivational speaker out there.   He provides a false sense of security and is dooming his followers to at the very least – a huge judgement for their lack of discernment, at worst – eternal death because they believed a man’s words over God’s Word and Osteen gives the impression that God wants man to be happy not to have to confront their sins and repent in order to be saved!   You should know that if you believe that, you are not going to get to heaven by any stretch.   And telling God (if such a thing were even possible!) when He judges you that you weren’t aware of your mistake or that Osteen said all the right things and you thought he knew what he was talking about will serve you no good then.   God provides everyone with ample opportunity to discover the Truth in the lifetime they’ve been given (bar those who die before an age of responsibility) and none of us will have any capacity to dare to try to defend ourselves at Judgement before a Just and Holy God the magnitude of Whom we have utterly no comprehension.    We have dared to make God in our image and thus we dare to think He will deal with us as we would perhaps deal with someone here who’d made mistakes in their lives – but if you truly read scripture and especially those passages where God talks about Himself and His view of mankind you would learn otherwise.

And if you do desire to know Him better I would suggest you read His Word first, man’s words second and your own words last – in other words give God His rightful place in your life, listen to solid and truthful exposition by those who obviously do the same e.g. Paul Washer, John MacArthur, Chuck Missler etc, and learn to allow God to tailor your own views accordingly with continual prayer for discernment while doing so.

Sorry but Mary is categorically NOT the mother of God!

For some that statement won’t come as any surprise since many have come to recognise its Truth.   But sadly, it’s more common to hear how Catholics are of late being taught the opposite and indeed worse – that Mary not only is the mother of God, but was also sinless and thus equally able to answer prayers and become a 4th person in the Godhead – sorry, but that’s exactly what they’re stating – if she was sinless and capable of forgiving sins then she is GOD and thus also gains that additional title.   That’s the main reason the Pharisees were condemning Jesus – because He claimed to be able to forgive sins.  However, while I could very easily spend a whole post pulling this whole concept to shreds very easily – one scripture alone amongst others shows very clearly that Mary herself knew that was never the case:-

Luke 1:46-47 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

In other words, Mary recognised that she was a sinner before God in need of a Saviour and He was providing the same.  But aside from that aspect, I wanted to provoke you to think a little deeper than the usual way in which we all (esp Protestants) think of Mary in any respect in her relationship to Jesus.  When Gabriel appeared to Mary and she was granted the awesome prospect of becoming a parent to the future Messiah and King of Israel and the world,  she was specifically told that the Holy Spirit would undertake something amazing in her body: