Posted in creation, discovery, icy finger of death

Icy finger of death caught on camera

HT to Charlie for sending this to me.

I am in awe of the natural world that God created. It is endlessly interesting and vibrant. What a Creator we have who should make these things by the sound of His voice! And He made the animals in one day! In thinking of how all the eco-systems interact and flow together to support one unified world, on which we float, I’m often rendered speechless. Wow.

Remember to thank the Creator for making such a habitable and pleasant place for us to live. Thank Him for His intellect and creativity that is on display for us to praise. He is surely a Most High God of infinite and boundless delight.

Below is a clip from the upcoming episide of Discovery’s Frozen Planet. I’ve seen some of the previous episodes and they are great. Here is a Fox News article about what you will see on the video:

“Filmed for the first time, the icy “finger of death” is an unprecedented look at nature’s beauty — seen at it’s devastating worst. Called a brinicle (or brine icicle), cameramen Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson used a time-lapse camera to capture this awe-inspiring event beneath the Antarctic ice shelf for the upcoming Discovery Channel special series, Frozen Planet. “We were just blown away by how beautiful they were,” producer Kathryn Jeffs told FoxNews.com. Jeffs was in Antarctica with Miller and Anderson to capture the unique event. “We were exceptionally excited and we knew we had something that had never been filmed before, never been seen before. No one has really seen the formation of a brinicle.”

“It was pretty emotional when we saw that we got it. This magnificent yet terrifying phenomenon is caused by brine, or naturally occurring salt water, which tends to be denser than the surrounding seawater and has a lower freezing point. When super cold brine trickles down, the warmer seawater surrounds the cyclone with a brittle layer of ice. But capturing the event on tape was no easy feat, as the crew battled brutal conditions, technical challenges, and even seal attacks. “Because there have been so few studies on the brinicles, it’s really, really difficult to tell when and exactly how they are going to form,” Jeffs explained to FoxNews.com. “They do have a tendency to form when the ice is being disrupted, or in extremely cold conditions — which disrupt the inner channels and sets in motion the flow of brine.”

“Following this hunch, Jeffs and her crew ventured out to the foothills of Mount Erebus, a remote volcano in Antarctica, where the team dealt with subzero temperatures and incredibly harsh conditions.”

“The area also happened to be a seal habitat, notoriously territorial creatures. “We finished the first dive only to find the next morning that a seal had knocked over the camera,” Jeffs said. In the end, the team found success, to stunning effect, capturing not only the brinicle formation but also, what Jeffs refers to as the “river of death” flowing in front of it. “It was pretty emotional when we saw that we got it,” Jeffs told FoxNews.com, adding that some of the crew were close to tears. “We’re really proud of the achievement.”

Frozen Planet premiers on the Discovery Channel on March 18


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Posted in creation, eternity, starry night, van gogh

A starry night breaks into eternal day

I run this blog at direction of the Holy Spirit. It is aimed at lukewarm Christians to examine themselves in the context of the times, and repent so they will not be left behind. It also examines the signs so that a non-believer wandering by might be moved by the many proofs that God is active in the world and is winding down the clock. Sometimes the emotions evoked by the times, the signs, and the reality of judgment is pretty brutal. But brutality and reality is not the only thing the Lord shows me.

Do you have an idea of how fiercely I love Him? Of glorying in the opportunity to plumb His umplumbable depths? Of the mystery and majesty of the relationship of man to Savior through His blood? Of how I am in eternal gratitude to the work and grace of the Holy Spirit?

I’ve been on a run lately. I have been listening to John MacArthur’s series on Creation, as well as reading some books on it, discussing it with friends, and defending it in public. The Spirit also gives me a lot of science interests to study up on. Given the way I came to the Lord, through rationality and science, I see God in science more often than not. I got interested in quantum physics a few weeks ago. Also nanotechnology. I wrote about a quantum leap and its relation to the Rapture an also the dissolution of the universe as prophesied in 2 Peter 3, just a few weeks ago, here. Lately I’ve been studying about Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel winner for quantum electrodynamics, and also the father of nanotechnology.

In the Genesis sermons, we were up to Creation Day 6. The testimony of God in the book of Genesis 1 is incredible and humbling, and…words fail me in thinking about the creation. But the more I study it, the more it makes my heart beat in love for our Creator. The sermons for Day 6 were split into part one and part two, because the text is so rich. MacArthur was preaching on the trinity, the “Executive Divine Council” as he calls it, and the reasons for the creation of the earth and humankind in the first place. We learned about the Personhood of the LORD, and about His relational capacities, and man’s place within them. The creation series of sermons build, and build and build toward this one singular moment where God personally made man. God did not say in the passive tense “Let there be”, as He had in the previous Days, He said “Let Us make…”. MacArthur used a LOT of science in his lessons, which is one reason why I like Him. The crescendo of the weeks of listening and study were bearing down on this moment.

You know how you feel when you are inside a crescendo…a symphony or a lecture or a book or a cooking lesson…something you are doing that is reaching its denouement. As I was listening and pondering, a sudden flash of insight came around the corner of my brain. Like a comet streaking into view, I call these flashes “incoming!” and revel in what they have to reveal.

As I was immersed in science and theology, listening to the words tumble out of the laptop speakers art came to mind, clearly and with force. Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” came to my eyes. It is a piece of Post-Impressionism I had never gravitated to nor examined very much. The very painting has itself seemed to achieve a cliche and in so achieving, is more easily dismissed. Which I had done.

I am not a huge fan of the Impressionists nor the Port-Impressionists, preferring the structured scientific styles of the early Renaissance painters and sculptors. But all of a sudden as I was listening to the purpose of the creation the answer came to me in Starry Night. It is a picture of eternity, of the relational communications between and among the Holy Spirit, Jesus and God. It is a picture of active and moving atoms in the unrolling of creation and man’s place within it. I can’t bring you into the thought any further because it was more of an insight in the comet’s vaporous tail than solidly examinable as the ball of ice that is its head. It just seemed suddenly to me that the painting was a study in matter, and molecules, and eternity, and creation, and relationship of the Divine and man’s smallness in all that context, but of his uniqueness, too.

Of course, I was intrigued and studied the painting and its origins further. I found Professor Albert Boime of UCLA, lecturing in the Social History of Modern Art. In his paper, “A History of Matter and a Matter of History” (can be read in .pdf, here) the following phrases in his famous paper discussing “Starry Night” seemed to me to capture the essence of what Van Gogh was showing us and was consistent with the insight given to me in the flash:

“apocalyptic exaltation”
“the celestial pageant as a source of moral energy”
“astronomical metaphors for religious experiences”
“work under the great starlit vault of heaven a something -which after all one can only call God and eternity- and its place above the world”
As Van Gogh said, “I was thinking of eternity the other night…”
“threshold of eternity”

The son of a pastor and deeply religious but as we know, troubled, Vincent Van Gogh showed us a glimpse of eternity in that painting, an insight into the mind of God. I wonder what it was like for the thinking population at that time. Evolutionary theory with all its pointlessness and Godlessness was beginning to permeate society. Evolution versus new advances in astronomy that showed the parade of celestial bodies in their courses. At the same time scientific advances with the telescope and photography of the heavens was making astronomy more interesting than ever. Jules Verne was writing books about trips to the moon and spiritism was coming into play to fill the religious vacuum caused by evolution. At the time when scientists were looking within and looking up, there was a disconnect with what evolution was telling them and what the heavens were telling them (Romans 1:18-22).

The truth of Romans 1:18-20 must have created a cognitive dissonance unlike at any other time in history.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

In the painter’s own words, he said of Starry Night, “…A kind of painting giving greater consolation.” It does give greater consolation. It does. Van Gogh was seeking a “divinity manifested in everyday life” we are told, and in Starry Night, I believe he found it.
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Posted in climate change, climate deniers, creation, global warming

Columnist advises forcibly tattooing climate change deniers. Or, just kill them

Sidney Glover, a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, wrote a piece today that is shocking in its incivility and intolerance. What have we come to when an influential writer has a piece published that advocates mutilation or death to those who disagree with him? He wrote in “The dangers of bone-headed beliefs“–

“Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies. Not necessarily on the forehead; I’m a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, ”Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?”

A reasonable man? Forcing tattoos on people who deny that man causes change to climate? He recants a bit though in the next sentence, claiming that forcing tattoos on people is “a bit Nazi-creepy.” So instead, he visualizes their death.

“So how about they are forced to buy property on low-lying islands, the sort of property that will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise, so they are bankrupted by their own bloody-mindedness? Or what about their signed agreement to stand, in the year 2040, lashed to a pole at a certain point in the shallows off Manly? If they are right and the world is cooling – ”climate change stopped in the year 1998” is one of their more boneheaded beliefs – their mouths will be above water. If not … OK, maybe the desire to see the painful, thrashing death of one’s opponents is not ideal.”

YA THINK?

The first point to recognize is that it is never, ever appropriate to call for the death of people with whom one disagrees. Mr Glover’s credibility was immediately bankrupted the moment his frustration with people who share an opinion differing from his overtook his good sense, propriety, and manners. How “intolerant.”

Secondly, I would have thought that the scam science behind climate change that was uncovered at Climate-gate would have punctured at least the animosity, if not the entire proposal. Apparently the animosity against climate change deniers still exists, though now, of course, the reason for it is even more laughable because it doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on.

Third, the opinion piece proposed the death or mutilation of people who do not share the writer’s view. But such an opinion is not born of a moment and written in a second. The writer must first feel the rising frustration for a period of time, which actually tipped over into rage, given the level of action he demands. He used the word ‘frustrating’ but when you’re frustrated with someone you shrug and throw up your hands, not call for their execution in such a lengthy fashion as staking out at low tide. That’s blind rage. It must have been visualized, written, edited. Then published. Mr Glover has spent a lot of time with his anger, and he selected this topic from among many others from which he could have chosen. 

Fourth, as a Christian, I agree that global warming (now called “climate change”) is happening. It has always happened, since the Flood. The climate changes. The term ‘global warming’ was actually coined inadvertently by a scientist named Dr. Wallace Broeckner, who was responding to the twenty-year decline in temperatures in a paper and wondered if a global warming was about to occur. That was 1975. Even as recently as 1992, Mr Glover forgets that there was little consensus on the facts of global warming among scientists. In a paper written by Richard S. Lindzen titled, “Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus” he says, “Most of the literate world today regards “global warming” as both real and dangerous. Indeed, the diplomatic activity concerning warming might lead one to believe that it is the major crisis confronting mankind. The June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focused on international agreements to deal with that threat, and the heads of state from dozens of countries attended. I must state at the outset, that, as a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios being popularly described.”

Then Climategate occurred in 2009. The UK Telegraph reported, “The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka  CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet. When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest: ‘Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.’ “

So with all the scientific error, muddiness, myth, and hollowness of the climate change theories, Mr Glover is still so sure of his position that he calls for death and mutilation of those who dare to disagree. Perilous times indeed, when intolerance and blind rage outpaces debate and reason.

Though I agree the climate is changing, the difference I have with Mr Glover is that I disagree that it is man-caused. It is not. It is God-caused. There is nothing that mere man could or would to to disrupt the cycles set forth by God and cause an extinction. God is fully in control of creation, at all times. And there we have the root of the antipathy toward ‘climate change deniers.’ They are in reality angry because we do not agree with their atheism, instead we put the Lord over ourselves and not ourselves over ourselves. Antipathy toward God will always rouse ire disproportional to the situation.

Nebuchadnezzar was in a rage and a fury, calling for the deaths of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. (Daniel 3:12-14) because they refused to worship the image he had set up. In Luke 4 and Luke 6, listeners of Jesus were driven into a blind rage, in Luke 4, they determined to throw Jesus off a cliff. In Acts 7:54, they who heard Stephen’s admission of the truth became so incensed they gnashed their teeth and stoned him to death. The truth rouses ire.

I am one who refuses to bow down to the idol of man-made climate change. Instead I bow down to the Lord’s divine power and control over creation. The irony is, Mr Glover, unless he repents and understands man’s proper place in creation, is the one who will wind up with a tattoo. THAT is the real danger of bone-headed beliefs.

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Posted in creation, genesis, prophecy, revelation

If Genesis is creation, is Revelation UNcreation?

I’ve been reading the Creation verses a lot lately. Genesis 1 is wonderful and it fascinates me completely. I am also listening to John MacArthur’s series on Creation and last night I heard him explain the verses relating to Day 3. I think it is so important to be thoroughly familiar with the Creation verses because they are under such assault. The Spirit has impressed me with this, and when I read in the local newspaper an opinion piece by the founder of the paper that he believes evolution and creation are co-existent, I couldn’t let it go. Rather, the Spirit wouldn’t let me let it go. I wrote a response, and still, the Spirit wouldn’t let go.

Part of what I wrote was this: “First, science and the bible are at odds on the point of creation. There is no scientific process that has, can, or will ever confirm the creation of the world. It can’t. Creation was not a scientific event, it was a supernatural one.”

Christian, don’t worry about defending the bible against science. It is our job to witness to His holiness against sin.

I continued listening to the sermon, and MacArthur got to the part about seeds. The earth was made fully mature. Adam and Eve were grown adults. The trees were mature and bore seeds and fruit from the first moment. So did plants. (Genesis 1:11). MacArthur said,

“One of the great, great wonders of the world is the science of seed dispersal. I watched an entire video on that just absolutely astonishing to see how God designed seed dispersal, not the least of which is accomplished by birds in your own yard, sometimes even attempted on your car and on your head. Pre-fertilized seed dispersal is very efficient.”

How DO seeds disperse, I wondered. Wikipedia explains, “Seed dispersal is the movement or transport of seeds away from the parent plant. Plants have limited mobility and consequently rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their propagules, … There are five main modes of seed dispersal: gravity, wind, ballistic, water and by animals.” I started to think about the Tribulation and the verse in chapter 8 came to mind.

“The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.” (Rev 8:7). The earth is judged and that includes the vegetation, which He created on Day 3. Hmmm, grass and vegetation die in this, the First Trumpet Judgment.  But the verse later in Revelation came to mind also,

“After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.” (Rev 11:6). If wind is one of the major ways seeds are propagated, then after the vegetation is burned up then there is very little chance that new growth will occur, especially of no wind if blowing “on any tree”… or its seeds. And when the Two Witnesses cause no rain to fall upon the earth for three and a half years, (Rev 11:6) then that diminishes the chance for new growth all the more.

Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam, detail, Sistine Chapel

It occurred to me then, that Revelation could be seen as the orderly progression of UNcreation. Do the seven days of Creation match in reverse the seven years of Tribulation? Not exactly but in general. Revelation depicts judgment to be sure. But what a synchronicity that the first book of the Bible reveals how Creation was made, and the last book depicts its unmaking. On Day 1 the Light turned on, and ‘immediately after the tribulation of those days’, the sun, moon, and stars give no light” in other words, the lights are turned off. (Matthew 24:29-31). Heaven is made on Day 2, and in Rev 6:14 heaven is rolled up as a scroll. The sea creatures die. The land creatures die. The people die. The sun, moon, and stars fall.

The people know it is God, that He exists, and that He is exerting His power over them. In Revelation 16:9 they curse God on account of the plagues but they refused to repent and glorify Him. Those on the earth who rebel and deny His creative power will watch a slow and excruciating dismantling of creation, plank by plank. This is judgment indeed.

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Posted in creation, end time, genesis, keep n the sunny side, prophecy

Consider the sun

Wow! God’s creation is so pretty! This is a sunspot, seen through a new, atmospherically corrective lens.

“This is a first light adaptive optics image from the New Solar Telescope (NST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. “With a 1.6-meter primary mirror, the NST is the largest solar telescope in the world,” says Nicolas Gorceix of the observatory staff. “It has realtime correction for atmospheric distortion (adaptive optics), so we can see things in very high resolution–as small as 65 km wide on the sun. For perspective,” he adds, “Earth is slightly smaller than the whole sunspot including the dark umbra and the daisy petal-like penumbra. The spot is surrounded by the sun’s ubiquitous granular field [which shows the boiling motions of the sun’s surface].”

“Researchers believe that high-resolution studies of sunspots can help them understand how sunspots evolve and anticipate when they’re about to erupt. “Next year, we plan to upgrade the telescope with a much higher-order adaptive optics system to get even better images,” says Gorceix. Stay tuned to the BBSO home page for updates.”

source, spaceweather.com

I know you know the verses to Genesis 1:1-8, but just think of the beauty and complexity of the sunspot, ONE item in the entire universe, and think of all the people who insist that it all happened by accident and explosion, and pray for them. They are missing out on so much! Just seeing the stupendous planetary objects rotating gracefully in their habitations and understanding they were placed there by the Hand of God, they are missing a moment of fellowship with God. It is the same hand of God who made us, His children, His delight. Also, glory in the LORD GOD who made this expansive universe for us, yet who cares for us daily. We become so involved in our lives we forget to consider the sun, to consider the range of objects above out heads and under our feet that reveal His mind, whimsy, power, impressive creativity. And His understated, “And it was good.” Yes, our universe, our planet, our lives, are indeed good.

The History of Creation
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”  Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.”

 source, Astronomy Picture of the Day Aug 2006, NASA