Nick brings hope to Uruguay

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Nick Vujicic
God is using Nick Vujicic to introduce people around the world to the transforming power of JESUS CHRIST. I already have two posts on Nick – Nick on Oprah Winfrey’s Show and Nick in Cambodia. If you didn’t see Nick on 60 Minutes take a look on YouTube. 

On 22 October Nick arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, to talk about the freedom God has given him. Vujicic spoke boldly about the transforming power of God’s Word before politicians and journalists at Uruguay’s House of Parliament. Thousands of Uruguayans watched on television. Director of Operation Mobilization, Uruguay, Alejandro Las, was appointed as his official translator.

President Mujica also met with Vujicic and they joined in prayer as Alejandro translated.
“In the last few years it must have been the closest encounter he has had with the gospel in his life,” reflected Alejandro.
The front page of the Uruguayan newspaper the next morning proclaimed, “Vujicic Challenges Abortion Laws at Teleton”. His time at the centre for handicapped children brought a great deal of media attention, which he used to proclaim a biblical perspective on abortion.
In a press conference soon after, an OM journalist asked him about his views on separation of church and state.
Vujicic said, “When people see me, they say,“Wow Nick! We love your values; we love your attitude; we love your strength; we want your joy! But don’t tell us anything about your God. But for me you can’t separate the two. It’s only because of my faith that I have what I have.”

The streets in Montevideo were covered wall to wall with posters of Nick Vujicic. His testimony was aired on the three largest secular television channels in the country: Teledoce, Canal 4 and Canal 10.
At the Rambla, the recreational coastline of Montevideo, nearly 15,000 people stood for two hours in the chilly night air to hear what he had to say.
“If you want to know about the peace that has set me free, that will set you free, lift up your hand,” he shouted. As Alejandro fervently translated the message, a drug addict standing near the OM team raised his hand.
Another hand went up. Followed by another.
The dark sky over Montevideo’s shoreline witnessed hundreds of hands go up as individuals indicated a desire to know the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

Foundation for Affirming Moral Absolutes

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Truth and Transformation
Without the cross of JESUS CHRIST the world has NO foundation for affirming moral absolutes, for calling corruption by its name – SIN.  The cross of Christ is also the only available force that can withstand and push back the storm of moral relativism that is upon us.
Thanks to the cross of JESUS, we have a firm basis – empirical, historical and philosophical for affirming moral absolutes without the same moral law condemning us. The cross does not just provide a philosophical framework for moral absolutes. It also provides the WAY to deliver us from SIN.
By the cross GOD shows us that the power He wants us to have is not the power to Lord it over others, not power to exploit and oppress, but power to sacrifice ourselves for others.
Of course, God knows we can’t do this in our own strength so He sends the third person of the Trinity, Holy Spirit to indwell all believers. The transformation of the disciples at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon them in power is the same power available to Christians today. They were able to disregard the threats of the Jewish leaders, rejoice in persecution and deliberately chose to disregard the state and continue preaching JESUS. This is real evangelism.
The author of Truth and Transformation, Vishal Mangalwadi described by Christianity Today as India’s foremost Christian intellectual is authentic. Vishal has spent time in jail in India for civil disobedience in helping the lowest caste, Dalits. He has planted churches there, is an international lecturer, social reformer, political columnist and author of fourteen books.
Truth and Transformation is a must read for anyone concerned with the state of current world events.
I like Vishal’s explanation for the rational cynicism that has now become the hallmark of secular universities. “The west has exchanged its worldview shaped by the Bible for a lie that the human mind is an accident of blind chance, no more valid than an animal brain”. Remember most of the prestigious universities in the UK and USA commenced as Christian Institutions, e.g. Oxford and Harvard.

VISUAL EVIDENCE FOR NOAH’S FLOOD

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Mike Oard’s latest book covers one of the lesser traveled pathways in the creation-evolution debate; that of geomorphology, the study of landscapes.
To begin, he provides a concise description of geomorphology, stating that it is:
“… concerned with the geography, topography, shape and other permanent features of the earth’s surface” (p. 19)
Given that landscapes, by means of the camera, are one of the most visually recorded, appreciated and discussed entities on the planet it is rather surprising that the profile of geomorphology is not higher in these debates. This book does much to rectify this situation and place this study in its rightful context, providing compelling evidence for the reality of the biblical Flood that is observable to people everywhere as they go about their daily lives.
In simple language with concise usage of references, Mike shows in his opening chapter that orthodox science is bereft of constructive explanations for mountains, plateaus, mesas, planation surfaces, huge canyons and gullies.
The notion of slow and gradual development of valleys, river systems, glacial systems and various scenic entities as a consequence of gradual development is simply not in keeping with the evidence presented before our eyes. Given that there is a wealth of material on the study of geomorphology, it is rather surprising that experts in the field express considerable doubt as to having any explanations for the development of the landscapes they describe. Mike draws reasoned conclusions in each chapter as he takes the reader through a number of well-known landforms, showing how uniformitarianism fails to explain the evidence. He then describes how their formation can be elegantly explained using Noah’s Flood.
The book is very readable with a nice easy flow to the text and a wealth of photographic material that adds to the landscape wonders that Mike is expounding.
Add to this the recognition that water is one of the critical elements in the development of landscapes then the natural conclusion is that the Flood as described in Genesis, in particular its Recessive stage during which the floodwater’s flowed from the continents into the newly forming oceans, is the causal factor for the scenery observed throughout the earth today. This is the central theme of Oard’s book.
If you want to better understand the scenery and natural features of the landscape and strengthen your belief in the Bible as TRUTH then get this book.
abbreviated version of a review by Barry Tapp for http://www.creation.com

The Tri-une nature of God is the foundation for human thinking and feeling.

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Jonathan Edwards, one of America’s greatest thinkers and theologians in “An Essay on the Trinity” from “Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings” (Cambridge UK 1971) provides a remarkable description of how the three persons of the trinity relate to each other.
Summary: The Father is God existing in the primal, unoriginated, most absolute manner. God the Son stands forth eternally as a work of God’s THOUGHT (thinking). And God the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as an act of their JOY (feeling). They are co-eternal and equally divine.
Also John Piper in his book “Think” says it well: God’s existence as a Trinity of Persons is the foundation of human nature as head and heart, thinking and feeling, knowing and loving.
God’s “thinking” and “feeling” are deeply part of His Trinitarian being.
God made the world so He can communicate, and we his creatures receive, His glory; and that it might be received by both the mind and heart.
If we are to live as people made in the image of God to glorify Him fully, we must engage our mind in knowing Him truly and our hearts in loving Him duly.
The mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fire of the heart.

Evidence for Global Flood at Dinosaur National Monument, USA

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Allosaurus
At Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, a confused tangle of bones juts from a ridge of sandstone, chock-full of dinosaur fossils. The sandstone is part of the Morrison Formation, a body of sedimentary rock extending from New Mexico to Saskatchewan in the north and covering more than 1 million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) of the western US and Canada. Eleven different species of dinosaur have been dug from the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, including one of the largest and most complete skeletons of a giant Apatosaurus ever found.
The dinosaur bones are concentrated in an extensive lens-shaped bed of rock and are an outstanding example of a ‘mass burial’ deposit. Dinosaur National Monument has been called “the greatest dinosaur quarry ever discovered”, and is the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. For decades, visitors to this spectacular site were told that the fossils represent generations of dinosaurs that lived and died within a peaceful swamp environment some 150 million years ago. But geologists now realize that the remains did not accumulate that way. So how did the bones get there, and what do they tell us?
The new uniformitarian views entail belief in many local floods emplacing animals in the same location each time, with identical volcanic eruptions of exceptionally violent extent ‘just so happening’ to occur each time the fossil remains were being deposited. They also require belief in animals fossilizing in situations where they are not observed to fossilize today. Further complicating such interpretations is the presence of whole, articulated skeletons. A more sensible and elegant interpretation, one that makes sense of all the evidence, is that the animals at Dinosaur National Monument were killed and buried by massive water action operating as a single, yet multi-stage, event.
A straightforward reading of the book of Genesis makes plain that dinosaurs were created alongside man (Genesis 1:24–31), and that those not on board the Ark were destroyed in a calamity that engulfed the world (Genesis 7:21–23). The year-long deluge began when the “fountains of the great deep” were opened, and was thus likely associated with volcanic activity.
The Morrison Formation, covering several states of North America, and of which Dinosaur National Monument is a part, reveals an enormous magnitude of watery deposition. It represents just another piece in the geological puzzle that, together with many others all around the world, comes together to spell: global Flood.
extract from article in Creation magazine Vol 33 by Jonathan O’Brien

GOD says, “we are without excuse”

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photo (16)Dr Werner Gitt
Information scientist Dr Werner Gitt makes a compelling case in his book “WITHOUT EXCUSE” that the design and information in the universe proves the existence of an all powerful creator.

Dr Gitt obtained his degree in engineering from the Technical University in Hanover, Germany. After receiving his PhD, he was appointed head of the Department of Information Technology at the German Federal Institute for Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig). Seven years later he was promoted to Director and Professor at PTB.

Three prerequisites must be fulfilled in order for the German Ministerium to award the title Director and Professor at a German Research Institute on the recommendation of the Presidium. The person must be:
1. a scientist with a PhD qualification from an approved University.
2. one who has published a significant number of original research papers in the technical literature.
3. must head a department in his area of expertise, in which several working scientists are employed.
Dr Werner Gitt has an impressive repertoire of awards and published works so the conclusions reached in his book cannot be lightly dismissed.
WITHOUT EXCUSE relies upon undisputed laws of science and logic, drawing from a wide range of mainline peer-reviewed scientific publications to formulate the premises of the book as well as in representing the main claims of today’s prevalent scientific materialism.

Premised on the truth of Romans 1:20, Dr Gitt and his two co authors Bob Compton and Jorge Fernandez decisively confront the issue of defining information and its properties then proceed to formulate a scientifically valid series of deductions demonstrating how the existence of information leads one first to the existence of ‘a god’ and then specifically to the GOD of the BIBLE.
WITHOUT EXCUSE is an excellent tool for Christians, providing insight into the clash of WORLD VIEWS and tools for defending the claims of scripture.
It is also a must read for any individual who genuinely wants to investigate the claims of Christianity.

To get a copy of the book WITHOUT EXCUSE go to http://www.creation.com

HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD

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A wonderful example of a man who lives eternally now is LOREN CUNNINGHAM, founder of YWAM (Youth With A Mission). Loren Cunningham’s dream began with a vision – waves of young people moving out across the continents announcing the good news of Jesus Christ to the whole earth.
Decades later, Loren’s vision was realised. YWAM has grown into an interdenominational movement of Christians from around the world dedicated to presenting the Gospel to their generation.
The amazing story of Youth With A Mission demonstrates that God does speak to HIS children, those who will obey Him. He does guide and provide for them in miraculous ways which not only impacts their lives but also the world to the glory of God’s Kingdom.
Loren’s book “Is That Really You God? is truly an adventure in hearing and obeying the voice of God.  As Loren  explains, hearing the voice of our heavenly Father is a basic right of every child of GOD.  Don’t make guidance complicated, says Loren. “It’s actually hard not to hear God if you really want to please and obey Him! If you stay humble, He promises to guide you. ” Proverbs 16:9.

Loren offers three simple steps that have helped him and the leaders at YWAM to hear God’s voice:

1. Submit to His Lordship – silence your own thoughts and desires and the opinions of others. Make it clear to the Holy Spirit you need to know God’s thoughts/direction.

2. Resist the enemy – use the authority Jesus has given you to silence the voice of the enemy. James 4:7, Eph. 6:10-20.

 3. Expect an answer – expect your loving heavenly Father to speak to you. He will. John 10:27, Ps. 69:13, Exod. 33:11.

Start living eternal now by listening to and obeying the voice of God. He has a plan for your life. 

Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of design

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Dr SanfordDr John Sanford

Almost all the early transgenic crops were transformed with the gene gun – especially corn and soybeans.

Dr John Sanford, a former Cornell University Professor, is well known in genetic engineering circles as the co-inventor of the ‘gene gun’ approach to genetic engineering of plants. This technology has had a major impact on agriculture around the world.                                                                                                                                                           

For Christians, Dr Sanford is a prime example of how the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit transforms our lives as we submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christianity is not a democracy it’s a Kingdom. Jesus taught us to pray to our Heavenly Father, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
See what Dr Sanford has to say, “I came to believe in God but this still did not significantly change my intellectual outlook on origins. I accepted evolution. However thankfully, the Holy Spirit transformed my mind as I submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This included how I viewed science and history. I would not say science led me to the Lord which is the experience of some. Rather, I would just say that the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see God as creator – I was blind and gradually I could see. On a personal level, this was a time of spiritual awakening, but professionally I remained ‘in the closet’. I felt the need to take a temporary leave from academia and institutional science because of the tension and enormous hostility I sensed from my academic colleagues. In the current intellectual climate to reject evolutionary theory has the appearance of rejecting science itself. This is totally upside down”.
Professor Sanford is back and he considers that whilst his ‘gene gun’ success was a special blessing, it only paved the way for his current work “which I consider much more important”.
His ground breaking book GENETIC ENTROPY and the MYSTERY of the GENOME traces the history of human genetic decline due to mutations in our DNA. The evidence is startling because it refutes conventional dates for alleged human evolution.
All of the problems with evolutionary theory as outlined in GENETIC ENTROPY and the MYSTERY of the GENOME have now been rigorously proven using numerical simulation by scientists, Dr John Baumgardner, Dr Wesley Brewer, Dr Paul Gibson and Walter ReMine M.S using ‘Mendel’s Accountant’, a state of the art computer analytical tool for genetic systems which they had developed.
1. Mutations arise faster than selection can eliminate them.
2. Mutations are overwhelmingly too subtle to be selectable.
3.”Biological noise” and “survival of the luckiest” overwhelm selection.
4. Bad mutations are physically linked to good mutations, so they cannot be separated in inheritance. The result is that all higher genomes degenerate. Genetic Entropy is no doubt the underlying mechanism explaining the extinction process (mutation accumulation).
These findings have been widely reported and Mendel’s Accountant is available for free download to assist any scientist interested in furthering knowledge in this field.
Dr Sanford’s second book outlining these findings “Genetic Entropy and Mendel’s Accountant is expected to be published shortly.
For more information on Dr John Sanford and to get a copy of his book visit http://www.creation.com

Another eminent PhD scientist prepared to buck the establishment

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Dr Kenyon received his PhD in biophysics from Stanford University in 1965 and completed his post doctoral work at UC Berkeley, Oxford and NASA.

In 1969 as an evolutionist he co-authored the book entitled Biochemical Predestination which was adopted in the USA as a graduate textbook and was regarded as the seminal work on the formation of living cells from the chemicals of the earth.
By the 1980’s Kenyon came to the conclusion that after many years of total failure by laboratories around the world to recreate the scenario described in his textbook, he knew that intelligent design was needed for life’s beginning.
Want to see what happened as a result google Dr Kenyon and Scope’s Trial in Reverse.

ANOTHER EMINENT SCIENTIST CLAIMS EVOLUTION DEAD

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Dr Richard E Smalley was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 for discovery and research on a totally new allotrope of carbon. Many researchers date the dawn of the modern nanotechnology field to Dr Smalley’s “buckyball” discovery.
Dr Richard (Rick) Smalley M.A. PhD Princeton University was the Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy at Rice University, Houston Texas.
Professor Smalley’s many awards included eight honorary doctor of science awards.
Whilst sceptical of religion most of his life, Rick Smalley became a Christian only in his last years, partly due to his intensive study of intelligent design.
He claimed that Darwinian evolution had been given its death blow due to the advances in genetics and cell biology and that it was now clear that biological evolution could not have occurred.

If evolution is dead as so many leading scientists now acknowledge, isn’t it time it was buried.
The real problem is revealed in the following quotes from leading evolutionists.

“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.” Dr Scott Todd, Kansas State University.

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…because we have a prior commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create as apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive , no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.” Professor Richard Lewontin (retired Harvard University evolutionary biologist and geneticist).