Scientists at Harvard University, working with Google AI/machine learning experts, have published an amazing study of a one cubic millimetre piece of human brain. (The piece was excised during a medical procedure).
Sliver of brain tissue
The sliver of tissue, ~3 mm long, was sliced into over 5,000 thin sections and each one was scanned with an electron microscope. The images were then analyzed with Google’s machine learning programs (AI) to piece together a detailed 3-dimensional picture of the cells and their connections.
The tiny fragment contained 57,000 cells and 230 mm (9 in) of fine blood vessels. It had thousands of neurons and nearly 150 million synapses (the major connections between neurons).
The electron microscope images alone occupied 1,400 terabytes of computer memory. To put this in perspective, a typical large external hard drive today stores 20 terabytes. It would take 70 of these hard drives to store the data. But the whole brain is one million times this volume. Scaling up, we would need 70 million hard drives. At just $US300 each, this would cost 21 billion dollars, quite aside from the power to run them. And that’s just for one copy.
The researchers found things that have not been seen before. As one of the co-authors who helped lead the research, Jeff Lichtman, remarked to the Guardian,
“We found many things in this dataset that are not in the textbooks. We don’t understand those things, but I can tell you they suggest there’s a chasm between what we already know and what we need to know.“
We have a long way to go before we understand how the brain works. Indeed, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
It is getting harder and harder for biological scientists to cling to evolution and random chance and deny intelligent design for what they can now observe. Since the discovery of DNA and the electron microscope that revealed complex machinery even in the simplest cell, the demise of evolution as the cause of life on this planet was sealed.
“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Romans 1:20-23
Sample, I., Scientists find 57,000 cells and 150m neural connections in tiny sample of human brain, theguardian.com, 10 May 2024.
Shapson-Coe, A. et al., A petavoxel fragment of human cerebral cortex reconstructed at nanoscale resolution, Science384(6696):2024.
This article appeared in the latest issue of Creation Magazine
Sorry I have not been able to put up new posts as my wifi is down. I am doing this post on my phone. I am waiting on a new modem. I have done several posts on the Nephilim based on Doug Hamp’s three books. I believe it is important to understand who they were as I believe it relates to what we will see play out in the fast approaching end times before Jesus returns as He said He would. It may be two or three days before I receive the modem. I enjoy doing the posts and hope they are helpful. Be blessed. Ron
“So I (Solomon) became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:9-11
Solomon tells us that he had tried every earthly pursuit and pleasure and all were found wanting. Yes, this life does have its pleasures and satisfactions, and we should thank God for them (Ecclesiastes 2:24–25; 5:18–19; 8:15). But in the final chapters, he points to the ultimate answer once we have learned that nothing under the sun can completely and permanently satisfy. That can be the only reason, why this book is in the Bible.
The author puts himself—and his readers—in the shoes of the secularist, one who gives little thought to God. He wants us to look closely at the visible world and the answers it seems to give before he will do more than drop hints of where he is taking us.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, he drops another hint of where he is going. He writes: “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time.” This is an indirect reference to Genesis 1:31: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” He continues, saying God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Here is the implicit recognition that we have been created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), with the capacity to relate to Him personally. But from our creaturely position “under the sun”, without biblical insight and with an evolutionary mindset, this life looks like an untidy chaotic mess, with no apparent rhyme or reason. We never have the satisfaction of fully understanding what God is doing (Eccl.:16–17).
We need God’s revelation, this is the author’s whole point: we cannot plumb the mystery of life without God’s help. We have arrived in the middle of life’s drama, not knowing the plot. Without the backdrop revealed to us in the early chapters of Genesis, the truth about our beginnings, and why the world is now broken, will remain a mystery to us. The book of Ecclesiastes ends with the call to acknowledge the limits of our perspective and our understanding, and to accept our status as creatures under the dominion of our Creator. (Ecclesiastes. 12:1).
Throughout the book, the author continues his demolition of false hope and self-sufficiency. He notes the harshness of life (Eccl. 3:16; 4:1) and the breakdown of law and order (Eccl. 8:11) as part of the evidence of humankind’s bias toward evil. His observations are summed up in Eccl. 7: 29: “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” This is another indirect reference to Genesis, this time to Adam and Eve, created originally “upright” before their disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1–6). In seeking to be “like God, knowing good and evil”, they chose to deny their creaturely status by reaching for more than God had granted them. Ever since mankind has had a propensity to evil, and the originally perfect world has become harsh and chaotic. G.S. Hendry comments: The eyes of Ecclesiastes are fully open to the vanity and the corruption to which the creation is subject (Romans 8:20 ff), and the whole book has been aptly described as an exposition of the curse of the Fall (Genesis 3:17–19).
By the end of chapter 10, the author’s work of demolition is complete; the site has been cleared. Chapters 11 and 12 point us to “the end of the matter” (Eccl. 12:13). These two chapters fall into three sections which can be summed up in three crisp commands:
Be Bold (Eccl. 11:1-6): We are here warned against being overly cautious: “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” (v. 4). Few great enterprises have waited for ideal conditions; no more should we. “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (v. 1). There is an element of risk in any enterprise, he says, but it is better to launch out and fail than to keep our resources to ourselves.
Be joyful (Eccl. 11:7-10): Verse 7 captures the bliss of being alive, but this is balanced by the knowledge that life’s pleasures will give way to “the days of darkness” (Eccl. 11:8). We are warned against letting life’s gifts beguile us into living for them alone. Verse 9 puts us on the right path: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth …Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.” The prospect of divine praise or blame makes every detail of life significant. To know this is to be reminded that we reap what we plant.
Be Godly! Eccl. 12:1-8, 13-14. The final chapter speaks of honouring God with our lives while we can do so and before our strength fades and our bodies return to the dust. To “remember … [our] Creator” (v. 1) is to drop all pretense of self-sufficiency and to commit ourselves to Him. Verses 2–7 use rich imagery to remind us that death is inevitable.
In verse 2, the chill of winter is in the air as the rains persist, and the clouds turn daylight into gloom. In the verses that follow, the various members and faculties of the body are pictured as a household that has suffered the ravages of time. The scene in these verses brings home to us the fading of physical and mental powers that will always accompany advancing age. One by one, old friends disappear, familiar customs change, and hopes long-held must be laid aside.
One’s youth, then, is the best time to face this stark reality: “Remember … your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (Eccl. 12:1).
He has brought us at last to “the end of the matter” (Eccl. 12:13). Here finally is the goal for which we were made: the eternal God toward whom the eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11) was meant to lead us. When this world has given us its finest things, there is still a hunger in us that only God Himself can satisfy. These souls of ours cannot live on the wretched husks of a purely materialistic philosophy. Sooner or later a famine sets in. That immaterial part of us that we call the soul or the spirit can never quite delude itself that the atmosphere of a secular society is its native air. We were made for eternity, and nothing “under the sun” can fully or permanently satisfy us.
Centuries after this book was written, One greater than Solomon said to a lonely Samaritan woman standing beside a well:
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”John 4:13–14
In October 2021, Facebook (FB) announced what was arguably the largest corporate change in its 20-year history. Mark Zuckerberg and his executive team had decided to go all in on “the metaverse.” So much so that the company decided to change its name to Meta (META) and rebrand entirely.
Here’s what the company’s announcement stated…
The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together – and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world.
Meta’s timing to focus on “the” metaverse – one it hadn’t created yet – was costly. Meta’s share price collapsed 73% from the time of the announcement through November 2022. The stock then languished there for several months into the new year. It meant that there was no immediate way to monetize this massive multibillion-dollar investment it was making. And the worst part? It diverted its entire corporate focus to its metaverse initiatives at precisely the same time the world of artificial intelligence was absolutely booming with breakthroughs.
It went all in too early on a technology that was not ready to be monetized… and it paid the price. That November (2022), Meta cut its workforce by 11,000 (13%) to reel in costs. By March 2023, it announced more job cuts – another 10,000 positions – and that it would be shifting its focus away from the metaverse and heavily into large language models and generative AI.
Many Thriving Metaverses
What drove Zuckerberg to make the move to Meta? There were already several prominent metaverses thriving with activity, growing exponentially and wildly profitable… and Zuckerberg wanted to be one of them.
Fortnite, a massive multiplayer online social game, is a perfect example. Fortnite has grown into a metaverse with more than 500 million registered players and about 220 million monthly active players.
The Fortnite metaverse has already generated more than $26 billion in revenue through March 2024 and is one of the most popular games in history.
Fortnite has its own currency, V-bucks, and its own developer ecosystem that allows creators to build new games and metaverses within the Fortnite ecosystem. Fortnite is owned by private tech company Epic Games which was last valued at $31.5 billion in 2022.
Equally as impressive as Fortnite, if not more so, is publicly traded Roblox (RBLX) which now has 380 million monthly active users. While Roblox graphics may not be as flashy as Fortnite’s, it is impressive in the scale of its universe with 79.5 million daily active players. And where Roblox excels over Fortnite is in its remarkably vibrant developer community that builds different games and new worlds within the Roblox metaverse. Roblox has about 2.5 million developers working with its metaverse. Those community developers made more than $410 million in the first half of this year alone. The Roblox metaverse is a fully functioning online world with branding, advertising, e-commerce, gaming, and its own currency of course – Robux.
Last week was an exciting week for the company as it had its annual developers conference which gave us a view on the future of metaverse technology… I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that the future of the Metaverse is all about artificial intelligence and generative AI.
Roblox gives its users and developers the ability to apply generative AI in designing a character for the game using simple text prompts. But this is just scratching the surface of what Roblox will be enabling. The company is leaning into multimodal AI that will enable not just image generation, but animation, work in 3D, software programming, and eventually video generation.
Roblox’s AI-powered metaverse strategy is already working extremely well. The company is now valued at $27 billion and will generate about $4.2 billion in revenue this year and more than $500 million in free cash flow. Compare that to Meta’s Reality Labs division which generated only $1.9 billion in revenue last year at a massive multibillion-dollar loss.
Meta would have been better off acquiring Roblox and its AI-powered metaverse from the start instead of spending at least $46.5 billion starting from scratch. Either way, the employment of generative AI is going to be a boom for gaming and metaverse development that will empower not only companies to accelerate development… but also developers and creators to take part in filling these metaverses with interactions, transactions, commerce, and social interactions.
Is it any wonder that this generation that was taught evolution is true and there is no God would spend their time creating their own world in the metaverse? As there is no meaning or purpose to life on Earth and this world is a mess anyway, we will create our own world where we are in control. Either that or the rising suicide rates for teens indicate they decide to end their lives.
The Bible, God’s Word is a book of prophecy and thankfully God has revealed in detail what will happen in the world before Jesus returns to restore righteousness. What we see happening in the world, particularly with the younger generation is exactly what is prophesied. Also, the nation God established for His purposes, Israel, is the centre of the world’s attention with antisemitism rampant, once again exactly as the Bible prophecies would occur before Jesus second coming to Earth.
How can we be sure our children won’t be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14)?
Our grandchildren are growing up in a whole different culture to us. They are going to have to deal with issues that we didn’t have to, what can we do?”
We need to first understand what happened. We need to deal with the foundational issue. It started 6,000 years ago in a garden. Satan said to Eve:
“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”Genesis 3:1-5
“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:3
Note what the apostle Paul says: The devil is using the same method on you, on your kids, on your grandkids, as he used on Eve to get you to a position of not believing the authority of God’s Word.
The Genesis 3 attack—“Did God really say?” And notice the next part, “And you will be like God.” You decide the truth for yourself. That is one of the problems we see through the whole Bible.
What is the method? To create doubt regarding the Word of God. It is an attack on the Word of God.
Here is the problem, our sinful nature leads us to trust man’s word rather than God’s Word. We want to be our own god and decide right and wrong for ourselves. Our churches need to be laying this foundation and teaching people about our sinful nature and understand the fact of what happened was this . . .
A battle began between two religions about 6,000 years ago, Man’s Word vs. God’s Word. It is the same battle today, the same in Luther’s day, and the same in Peter and Paul’s day. It is the same battle, and it hasn’t changed. The method by which that battle occurs does change through the years, but not the actual battle.
There is no neutral position Jesus makes it clear.
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Matthew 12:30
People have this idea that if you do not mention the Bible, when it comes to abortion or gay marriage and many other issues, then you are being neutral. But if you do not have the foundation of God’s Word, that means you only have the foundation of man’s word and that means you’ve already lost the battle.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock... And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” Matthew 7:24,26
If you reject God, you suppress the truth.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:18-20
Public education is not neutral. If the system is not for Christ, then it is against Him. So we send our kids there for five hours a day, all year long, and what do we do at home? What is the church doing? We need to be equipped to answer the following questions and God has raised up ministries to provide this information: Creation Ministries International http://www.creation.com and Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org
Sadly, most Christians cannot answer even the basic questions. Test yourself with the following questions.
How do you know the Bible is God’s Word? Where did the Bible come from? Who put the Bible together? Why are there those books in the Bible and not other books? Do you believe in God? Where did God come from? You believe in an eternal God? How do you explain that? Who made God? Did someone make God?
Answers in Genesis have built a life-sized Noah’s Ark at Cinncinatti in the USA. They can provide you with all the evidence you need to show that the Biblical worldwide flood of Noah’s day occurred.
Stop trusting in man, put your trust in God. People love the praise of man rather than the praise of God.
According to Paul Bryan, the author of Who is this God?, “A genuine Christian cannot become apostate. Those who apostatize demonstrate that they were never genuine Christians.” As Scripture says,
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” 1 John 2:19
George Barna in his 2020 survey on America’s Dominant Worldview observed that only 6% of adult Americans hold a biblical worldview and believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. A saved person holds a Biblical worldview and trusts God no matter the circumstances.
I strongly believe that the proponents of “once saved always saved” are right but we need to distinguish between those who are genuinely saved and those who claim Christianity simply because they have confessed Christ.
Not everyone who thinks they are a Christian is truly a born-again follower of Christ. I don’t believe in “once saved, always saved” as a guarantee for those who only confess Christ for “fire insurance.” I don’t think they had a change of heart (repentance) and are born-again. They will face the coming wrath of God that will be poured out with the Trumpet and Bowl judgements (Revelation 8 & 16). We are fast approaching the last seven years before years returns to Earth. Many Biblical prophecies warn us about what will happen during these last seven years (70th week of Daniel) so we will not be surprised. The good news is that Satan and his followers will be defeated at the battle of Armageddon and Jesus will usher in His Millennial Kingdom. Satan has had his 6000 years to rule over planet Earth now he will be bound in the Abyss and Jesus will rule for 1000 years to fulfill the promises made to Abraham, David, and Jesus that the nation God established for His purposes will finally be the lead nation of the world with Jesus as its ruler only then when Jesus has put all his enemies under his feet will the end come.
“Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” 1 Corinthians 15:24-25
To whet your appetite I have given a summary of four good arguments for the existence of God and hope they will prompt you to go to http://www.creation.com and or http://www.answersingenesis.org for more information.
THE DESIGN ARGUMENT
The universe has clear organizational structures and intricate laws that control it indicating an intentional complex plan. How can such high-level design exist without a designer? To claim that chance accounts for the world’s order and extreme complexity is irrational.
http://www.encodeproject.org The discovery of DNA and the electron microscope rang the death knell of evolution. DNA stores information in the form of a four-character digital code, with strings of precisely sequenced chemicals that transmit detailed assembly instructions. DNA builds protein molecules, the intricate machinery that allows cells to survive. Consider the most complex software program you’ve ever used. Could it have developed on its own, without an intelligent designer? Of course not. How much more ridiculous is it to suppose that time, chance, and natural forces—on their own—produced the far more complex DNA?
Scientists once likened the components of living cells to simple LEGO blocks. Now they know that “cells have complex circuits, sliding clamps, energy-generating turbines, rotors, stators, O-rings, U-joints, and drive shafts.” None of those tiny engines work unless all parts are present. Hence, they must have coexisted from the beginning. That’s what biochemist Michael Behe calls, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, “irreducible complexity.”
Non-Christian physicist Paul Davies writes, “We now know that the secret of life lies not with the chemical ingredients as such, but with the logical structure and organizational arrangement of the molecules…. Like a supercomputer, life is an information-processing system…. It is the software of the living cell that is the real mystery, not the hardware…. How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software?… Nobody knows.”
I think there’s a better answer than “Nobody knows”; namely, the atoms didn’t write their own software. God did.
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The Cosmological argument cites the world’s existence as evidence of an uncaused, eternal being who created and sustains it. Either, something comes from nothing (an unscientific notion), or a first cause or “prime mover” existed before everything else. Francis Schaeffer argued in He Is There and He Is Not Silent that a personal first cause, God, could account for both the material and personal elements of life, while a material first cause only accounts for the material.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT
The transcendental argument says that no part of human experience and knowledge has meaning apart from God’s existence. Without God, we have no basis for or explanation of order, logic, reason, intelligence, or rationality. Since Christians and atheists agree there is order and basis for reasoning, this is evidence for God.
THE MORAL ARGUMENT
The moral argument claims the existence of universal moral values—what humans generally recognize as right and wrong—has no explanation or objectivity without God.
1. Objective Moral Values Exist
Premise: Objective moral values (i.e., moral values that are true regardless of human opinions or beliefs) exist. For example, things like “murder is wrong” or “kindness is good” are often considered to be universally true.
Argument: If objective moral values exist, they need a grounding or source that transcends human subjectivity.
2. Moral Values Require a Foundation
Premise: If there are objective moral values, they must be grounded in something beyond mere human preference or societal conventions.
Argument: Naturalistic or atheistic explanations often struggle to account for objective moral values because they typically reduce moral values to evolutionary or sociological constructs, which are seen as subjective or relative.
3. God Provides a Foundation
Premise: The existence of God (or a transcendent, morally perfect being) is proposed as the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values.
Argument: A moral lawgiver (God) is posited to be the source of objective moral values because a perfectly good and just being can provide a foundation for these values, ensuring their objectivity and universality.
4. Conclusion
Conclusion: Therefore, the existence of objective moral values is best explained by the existence of God.
Grammy Award-winning country star John Rich is unapologetically wading into the deep waters of faith, morality, and cultural decay, fueled by a concern for what he sees as a crisis of conviction within the American Church.
“We are just overrun by all this wickedness everywhere you turn,” the 50-year-old one-half of the duo Big & Rich told The Christian Post.
Listen to his new song Revelation.The King is coming back againjustas John Rich sings. The evil spoken of in Revelation is manifesting in our time and people like John Rich see it.
“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:35-40
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.“ John 6:47-50
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.“ John 14:6
“As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”John 6:57-58
I could use more Scriptures, but if you do not believe in these, I am not sure why you came to this website.
Nelson Walters suggested I take a look at this website Counting from Caleb. This is a short (18 minutes) video by Ryan who presents evidence that Daniels 70 weeks prophecy can also be seen as 70 weeks of Jubilees (Shavuot) 70 x 7 x 7 = 3430 from the time of Caleb’s inheritance of the land in 1400 BC. This would mean that the final seven years (Daniel’s 70th week of years) would start on 4th October 28th, 2024, and end on 28th September 2031. This would be the end of the age and the start of Jesus’ Millennial Kingdom.
Ryan could be wrong but I believe we are in the Biblical prophesied end times before Jesus returns to Earth to rule and reign on Earth for 1000 years. Jesus Millennial Kingdom (http://www.millennialkingdom.net).
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 