Category: creator

Posted in creator, gnosticism, music of the spheres, pythagoras

This is My Father’s World", Music of the Spheres, Maltbie Babcock, and Pythagoras, part 3

Posted on by elizabethprata

Part 1
Part 2
In part 1 of “This is My Father’s World”, Music of the Spheres, Maltbie Babcock, and Pythagoras, I looked at how Pythagoras intuitively understood the harmony and order of the natural world, and the cosmos. Pythagoras in effect discovered music theory, and within it, musical spacing, octaves, and vibrations. He extrapolated from his discovery that a similar harmony and order in the planetary cycles and orbits must exist, and named his astronomical theory Music of the Spheres because of the order and harmony within it. Pythagoras even thought the planets made music in their courses. When you sing Pastor Maltbie Babcock’s hymn “This Is My Father’s World, Babcock references music of the spheres and it is specifically to Pythagoras’s concept Babcock refers.

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought

In Part 2 I looked at how Pythagoras is thought to the be the progenitor of string theory, the notion in physics that everything vibrates and strings are the elements that make up the universe. Pythagoras was very smart, and his experiments were carefully done. However, he was too smart for his own good, and wound up on the other side of God, promoting knowledge as the thing to be worshiped. More on that in a moment.

We looked at Kepler, the 16th century astronomer whose brilliance pushed forward Pythagoras’s theories much further, and we ended up in the twentieth century by looking at modern string theory.

Al this to say that Romans 1:18-23 are amazing verses.

“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. 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.”

Pythagoras, and Plato who brought Pythagoras’s concept to the people, for that matter, had incredible intellects. Yet when the truth was shown to them, they went away from it. See what Pythagoras and his followers believed:

“Pythagoras conceived the universe to be an immense monochord, with its single string connected at its upper end to absolute spirit and at its lower end to absolute matter–in other words, a cord stretched between heaven and earth. Counting inward from the circumference of the heavens, Pythagoras, according to some authorities, divided the universe into nine parts; according to others, into twelve parts. The Pythagoreans believed that everything which existed had a voice and that all creatures were eternally singing the praise of the Creator. Man fails to hear these divine melodies because his soul is enmeshed in the illusion of material existence. When he liberates himself from the bondage of the lower world with its sense limitations, the music of the spheres will again be audible as it was in the Golden Age. Harmony recognizes harmony, and when the human soul regains its true estate it will not only hear the celestial choir but also join with it in an everlasting anthem of praise to that Eternal Good controlling the infinite number of parts and conditions of Being.“

Pythagoras and Plato saw a creator, but not the God in creation. You see the almost in Pythagoras. he almost got it right. There is a cord which connects us to the Creator. Job 30:11 speaks of it, and Solomon speaks of our connection to eternity by God’s setting it in our heart. (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

You see the almost in the belief that all creatures have a voice and respond to the Creator. Jesus said in Luke 19:40 that we cannot keep silent, if we did, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” And we know from Romans 8:22 that “For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” and that “all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” (Romans 8:19).

However, it is not true that ‘Man fails to hear these divine melodies because his soul is enmeshed in the illusion of material existence.’ We fail to connect to the ‘divine’ because of our sin, we are separated from God and in a discordant relationship with Him. We are His enemy and He is our judge. The material world isn’t the enemy, our flesh and sinful nature is.

“Pythagoras was not only the first to call himself a philosopher but also a priest -initiate of a mystery religion influenced heavily by Orphism, which taught that the essence of the gods is defined by number. Numbers, indeed, expressed the essence of all created things.” (source)

Out of Pythagorean cults came Gnosticism, which teaches based on Gnosis, the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means. This is exactly as Pythagoras said, we escape the material world by self-empowered actions.

Pythagoras suppressed the truth about his helpless state, and instead believed he could raise himself to a satisfactory level of spiritual attainment on his own power. God had made it plain to them. Yet they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and worshiped the creation. In Pythagoras’s case, he worshiped self, knowledge, and numbers. As far as numbers go, Pythagoras saw God’s harmony but worshiped the numbers. Out of his teachings came Sacred Numbers and Occult Mysteries:

Pythagoreans … believed that man can realise his divine nature by knowing the universal principle which governs the cosmos (a word coined by Pythagoras himself, meaning “world-order,” a world ordered in a state of mathematical harmony). This principle is Number, which is “the principle, the source and the root of all things”.

Wikipedia explains, The tetractys, or tetrad, is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, which is the geometrical representation of the fourth triangular number. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the secret worship of the Pythagoreans.

Plato was one of the three sources from which we understand Pythagorean theories, since no writings by Pythagoras survive. Plato said, “Geometry is knowledge of the eternally existent. Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.”

Out of Pythagorean mysticism came Rosicrucianism, a secret society still around today and which heavily influenced the Freemasons.

is it so surprising that one man who responded to the harmony and order of the world could go so wayward with the truth? No, for the bible explains it. In Genesis 3 when the serpent spoke with Eve, a few simple sentences gave rise to the false doctrines. 1 John 2:16 says “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

Johannes Kepler saw the same thing as Pythagoras yet he was a committed Christian. According to this essay from Answers in Genesis, “
During his youth, Kepler had become a committed Christian and dedicated himself to serving God. As he said shortly before he died, he believed ‘only and alone in the service of Jesus Christ. In Him is all refuge, all solace. Kepler intended to serve God as a Lutheran minister after completing his university education. However, God had other plans for this uniquely gifted young man. … Kepler strongly believed that ‘The world of nature, the world of man, the world of God—all three fit together.’ In particular, Kepler reasoned that because the universe was designed by an intelligent Creator, it should function according to some logical pattern. To him, the idea of a chaotic universe was inconsistent with God’s wisdom.”

Where Pythagoras, brilliant as he was, saw the logical pattern, he attributed it to Number, where Kepler attributed the logical pattern to God.

In the 20th century, plenty of scientists are born again but not one I mentioned who is an important contributor to understanding of string theory: Dr. Brian Greene. In answering an interview question whether he is religious, he said,

I think there’s a compatibility as long as your religious sensibility’s not literal. If you try to literally interpret teachings of the Bible you run smack into some pretty significant problems with what we’ve discovered in science. But if you’re willing to view religion more in a Spinozan or even Einsteinian way—that there is an overarching order and harmony that the laws of physics represent and reveal, and that order and harmony, if you want, ascribe it to some deeper theological origin—then I don’t think science has much to say about that.

As this writer at the University of Connecticut Physics Department stated, “Most of the founders of Quantum Mechanics started out with studying music. Strangely enough, the motion of the electron in a hydrogen atom actually does follow the Music of the Spheres, to a certain extent.”

Yet many of them went the way of Pythagoras or Greene, and not Kepler. And lest one think that Pythagorean theory is old news, it is still influencing people today with its Gnostic appeal. This article from Psychology Today attests, “Can Pythagorean Philosophy Help You to Live a Better Life?”

“In keeping with these musical/mathematical aspects of the universe, a key construct of Pythagorean philosophy was maintaining personal harmony. In my book, How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life (Conari, 2011), I describe the Bios Pythagorikos (The Pythagorean Way of Life), whereby a person endeavored to “tune” themselves in order to be in harmonic alignment with the larger universal harmony via a healthy mind, body and spirit that are nurtured by rigorous physical exercise, a healthy diet, daily meditational walks, as well as deep contemplative meditations on math, music, cosmology and philosophy.”

 “Once a person was well-tuned and in vibrational alignment, they could then self-actualize and become fully engaged human beings. The mystic Pythagoras even believed that such a well-tuned person could raise their level of consciousness and awareness and thus be able to “peek behind the veil” and experience what some have called “ultimate reality”.

When you hear that claptrap, of vibrations and harmony of the body and self-actualization and contemplative endeavors and alignment…now you know where it came from. Solomon, wise Solomon, said there is nothing new under the sun. All false doctrines, and all false reactions to true doctrines come from satan, who began his quest to divert us from the truth in heaven and then on earth in the garden.

Look at Maltbie Babcock’s reaction to the creation. He responded to the harmony and order of creation and the progression of the planets and included the phrase ‘music of the spheres’ rightly in his hymn. Maltbie Babcock saw the creation, the order and harmony of the advance of seasons, the planets, and the natural world itself, and worshiped the Creator. Same knowledge, different reactions.

“When Maltbie Davenport Babcock lived in Lockport, he took frequent walks along the Niagara Escarpment to enjoy the overlook’s panoramic vista of upstate New York scenery and Lake Ontario, telling his wife he was “going out to see the Father’s world“. (Wikipedia)

Babcock saw beauty and harmony in his Father’s world, and praised the Creator for it. What is your reaction? Do you praise Jesus Christ, the sustainer and Redeemer of our fallen world? Our Creator who paints sunsets int he sky and twinkled the named stars for his own pleasure? Praise and worship of God is the only reaction acceptable. Not worship of numbers or intellect or the spiritual world or the body. God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Creator, and He saw fit to create us and put us on our Father’s world.

Don’t be seduced by the Music of the Spheres, be entranced with the Maker of the heavenly harmony, which He has set in our heart.

—————-

Part 1
Part 2

Posted in "This is My Father's World", creator, Maltbie Babcock, music of the spheres, pythagoras

"This is My Father’s World", Music of the Spheres, Maltbie Babcock, and Pythagoras

Posted on by elizabethprata

Part 2 here

This is My Father’s World is a hymn written sometime in the 1800s by Maltbie Babcock, a preacher in upstate New York. It was published after his death in 1901, and set to music by Frank L. Sheppard. It references Psalm 104; Psalm 24; Acts 4:24; Acts 4.

If you ever heard the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” there is a lyric in the first stanza that mentions the “music of the spheres”. Hymnary.org explains the hymn’s lyric in context-

The text is a confession of faith and trust, a testimony that all creation around us is the handiwork of our Father, who made the creation (st. 1), charged us to take good care of it (st. 2), and continues to exercise his kingship over it … The phrase “music of the spheres” in stanza 1 refers to the ancient belief that the planets made music or harmony as they revolved in the universe.

Pythagoras, Plato, Kepler, Bohr, and Pastor Babcock all brushed up against the same order and harmony in creation in math, astronomy, and music, and each of these people throughout the centuries reacted to the divine knowledge of this creation differently, just as Romans 1 said they would. Some saw harmony and order in creation and worshiped it, while others saw harmony and order in creation and worshiped the Creator.

Musica Universalis is the Latin term for the Pythagorean philosophy called Music of the Spheres. Pythagoras initially developed the thought that the planets made music. This notion is not as far off as it sounds- Pythagoras was really on to string theory. Stay with me during this three part essay series as we look at the harmony of the order of the universe, math, and music.

Pythagoras and the Harmonious Blacksmith

“Musick has Charms to soothe a savage Breast” William Congreve, ‘The Mourning Bride’, 1697. Pythagoras was a mathematician and philosopher who lived in the 6th century BC. He is widely accepted to have founded music theory. Here is how he did it:

 He was walking past a blacksmith’s shop one day and heard the different tones of differently weighted hammers striking the anvils- in harmony. He heard the difference between discordant notes and harmonic notes, and realized after further exploration that there was an explanation- ratios.

By some divine stroke of luck he happened to walk past the forge of a blacksmith and listened to the hammers pounding iron and producing a variegated harmony of reverberations between them, except for one combination of sounds.” According to Iamblichus, [4th century scholar who wrote about the Pythagorean sect] Pythagoras immediately ran into the forge to investigate the harmony of the hammers. He noticed that most of the hammers could be struck simultaneously to generate a harmonious sound, whereas any combination containing one particular hammer always generated an unpleasant noise.

He analyzed the hammers and realized that those that were harmonious with each other had a simple mathematical relationship–their masses were simple ratios or fractions of each other. That is to say that hammers half, two- thirds, or three-quarters the weight of a particular hammer would all generate harmonious sounds. On the other hand, the hammer that was generating disharmony when struck along with any of the other hammers had a weight that bore no simple relationship to the other weights.” (source)

Listen to Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” from his fifth suite for harpsichord here.Whether the blacksmith story is legend or truth is hard to say- there is so little written about Pythagoras himself, though lots about the sect he founded.

Already steeped in music for pleasure, Pythagoras was an excellent lyre player and after the blacksmith incident he began to notice ratios in stringed instruments also. Pythagoras knew what much of previous antiquity had long understood but had not known why: audible tones based on low-number relationships produce harmonious sounds that are easy on the ear and soothe the soul. Apparently at some point, blacksmith incident or not, the penny dropped for Pythagoras and he discovered octaves.

Frontispiece to Theorica Musice, Franchino Gafurio, 1492

The upper left illustration depicts Jubal, the biblical father of music, and six blacksmiths with differing size hammers striking an anvil. This relates to the story that the young Pythagoras was first moved to investigate musical intervals on hearing the notes produced by different size hammers at a blacksmith’s shop. The upper right illustration depicts Pythagoras testing the interval of an octave between bells of size 16 and 8 and between glasses filled in the proportion 16 and 8. The lower left illustration shows Pythagoras testing intervals on a stringed instrument and the lower right illustration shows Pythagoras and his pupil Philolaus testing intervals by means of flutes. (source)

Early musicians had little to no understanding of why particular notes were harmonious and had no objective system for tuning their instruments. Instead they tuned their lyres purely by ear until a harmony emerged– i.e., until it sounded good. Pythagoras used to say they were torturing the pegs. Yet Pythagoras thought intuitively that music held deeper properties. The hidden ratios were one such deeper property, and its soothing effect was another. He said the vibrations of the music went “to the brain and the blood and transmitted to the soul.” (quote from Nichomachus, a Pythagorean who wrote the “Manual of Harmonics.”).

Pythagoras and Music Therapy

Pythagoras believed that music’s harmony on earth, in the universe, and through the body was so unified and so pervasive that the soul could be calmed by certain compositions. If Pythagoras had just read the bible, he would know this to be true.

In 2 Kings 3:15 it is written, “But now bring me a minstrel.” Pulpit Commentary says, “A player on the harp seems to be intended. Music was cultivated in the schools of the prophets (1 Samuel 10:5; 1 Chronicles 25:1-3), and was employed to soothe and quiet the soul, to help it to forget things earthly and external, and bring it into that ecstatic condition in which it was most open to the reception of Divine influences.”

So, music was the precursor to prayer and petition and thanks and praise! Music was used as a vehicle to alter a physical, emotional, and biological state; and to prepare the heart and mind for close communion with God. Pythagoras however missed the point of music, which was to praise God and not to self-actualize by engaging in works that raise our vibrations so as to meld with the Good.

Mike Mora of Morart Stewdios explains the music theory Pythagoras discovered, including musical spacing and its effects:

“In ancient Greece, singers would use a simple stringed instrument called the lyre. This had many “versions” with the most common being 4-string, 7 -string and 10-string.  Pythagoras, using the 7 string lyre discovered that when tuning a lyre to “standard” tuning that the invoked mood was light.  Yet when tuning another lyre a note higher … that the mood was somewhat darker. The main key here is that the same notes were played but the mood was different.” (source)

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. ~Pythagoras.While musical spacing is a terrific advance in music theory, using music to calm a soul devoid of Holy Spirit is a pointless endeavor. Pythagoras came so close in understanding the divine nature of music but veered so far away from it when suppressing the truth about God in pursuit of mystical musical meanings.

He applied music to healing and health rather than praise and petition. To that end, Pythagoras claimed to have cured various ailments of the the spirit, soul, and body by having specifically composed musical selections played for the one who needed curing.

The therapeutic music of Pythagoras is described by Iamblichus (ca. 245-330) Preeminent Neoplatonist of his age) thus: “And there are certain melodies devised as remedies against the passions of the soul, and also against despondency and lamentation, which Pythagoras invented as things that afford the greatest assistance in these maladies. And again, he employed other melodies against rage and anger, and against every aberration of the soul. There is also another kind of modulation invented as a remedy against desires.” (source)

In this way, Pythagoras replicated without understanding the fact of music’s effect upon the soul, as 1 Samuel below shows. He had invented a sacred music, but not the sacred music based on the God of the bible, as the Psalms are.

The only remedy against ‘desires’ is repentance, salvation, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence to help the person resist ‘desires’ AKA sins. (Galatians 5:16, Colossians 1:29). We see the effect music has upon the soul not from Pythagoras but in 1 Samuel 16:23,

So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.

Gill said, “so Saul was refreshed, and was well; became cheerful, his grief was removed, his black and gloomy apprehensions of things were dispersed, and he was cured of his melancholy disorder for the present…”

As for Pythagoras and the music of the spheres, the music of the heavenly bodies,

Pythagoras and his followers conceived of the universe as a vast lyre, in which each planet, vibrating at a specific pitch, in relationships similar to the stopping of the monochord’s string, harmonized with other heavenly bodies to create a “music of the spheres,” a concept which remained viable for centuries. Even though his theory was primitive, it serves to give us a picture which was later developed by philosophers such as Boethius, Johannes Kepler, … Robert Fludd, and, in contemporary times, by scientists working with quantum relationships.” (By Melanie Richards, M.Mus.,)

[**note: Robert Fludd was a 1600s occult philosopher]

The astronomy of the Pythagoreans marked an important advance in ancient scientific thought, for they were the first to consider the earth as a globe revolving with the other planets around a central fire. They explained the harmonious arrangement of things as that of bodies in a single, all-inclusive sphere of reality, moving according to a numerical scheme. Because the Pythagoreans thought that the heavenly bodies are separated from one another by intervals corresponding to the harmonic lengths of strings, they held that the movement of the spheres gives rise to a musical sound-the “harmony of the spheres.” (Encarta encyclopedia 2000)

In the Pythagorean concept of the music of the spheres, the interval between the earth and the sphere of the fixed stars was considered to be a diapason–the most perfect harmonic interval. ~From Stanley’s The History of Philosophy.

Pythagoras thought that the celestial bodies vibrated too, that the heavens themselves made a harmonious music in their orderly progressions around orbits. In effect, Pythagoras thought that “everything vibrates,” which isn’t far off the mark given what we now know about electromagnetic vibrations and waves.

Unfortunately, in none of these philosophies connected to Pythagoras did the Pythagoreans in the main connect to the One True God, who created that order and harmony. They went Hermetic, they went Gnostic, they went Rosicrucian. They went every which way except Christian. More on that in part 3.

In the second part let’s look at Pythagoras’s notion of string theory, from his time in 500BC to Kepler in the 1600s, to Niels Bohr and the modern quantum physics of the early 20th century. In part 3 I’ll take a look at how close but how far Pythagoras came to the truth, and how easy it is for satan to divert us when our soul intuitively responds to God in creation. I’ll finish part 3 with Preacher Babcock and My Father’s World.

———————–
Part 2 here
Part 3 here

Posted in creator, rembrandt, snowflake, social media

Rembrandt flash mob, how to use social media for Jesus, and snowflake

Posted on by elizabethprata

The last few days has had some heavy duty discernment stuff that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so here is some fun stuff.

This essay was very helpful! I recommend it.

The Who, What And When Of Social Media
“Now, the Bible never talks about social media. Not one word. But it is full of principles that we need to apply to our social media habits. Without these guidelines, our social media use devolves into an unhelpful, “the hashtag for Twitter and Twitter for the hashtag” scenario (1 Cor. 6:13). It’s not enough to use social media the way it was meant to be used; it’s designed by people without God. How can we redeem our use of this form of communication so that it becomes a tool for Christian service and worship?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This next set of events happened back in April of this year. I love creativity!

Rijksmuseum Renovation Brings Back Masterpieces By Johannes Vermeer And Other Dutch Artists
“The Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands, is finally set to reopen to the public, with Rembrandt van Rijn’s masterpiece “The Night Watch” reclaiming its place of pride. The giant painting hangs in the same central position it did before an epic, decade long, (EURO)375 million ($480 million) makeover, flanked by works by Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen and thousands of other Dutch cultural and artistic artifacts.”

In order to celebrate the re-opening of this wonderful museum, they staged a flashmob who re-enacted the events in Rembrandt’s famous “Night Watch” painting. It’s really good, see:

Here are a couple more stories about the flashmob.

Rembrandt Flashmob: Guards of the Night

Actors Restage Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” in Mall

And here is a link to the Dutch Museum, Rijksmuseum

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine, God makes every snowflake different. If one snowflake is this beautiful, how gorgeous will heaven be?

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Posted in creator, genesis, God

Hunter’s Moon 2013

Posted on by elizabethprata

I love weather. I grew up in New England, where the old adage attributed to Mark Twain goes like this: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” I’ve been through hurricanes, the Ice Storm of 1998, The Storm of the Century, The Blizzard of ’78, snow, Nor-easters, winds, humidity, heat, you name it. A friend from Nova Scotia said once she was hanging bathing suits on the clothes line outside, and it began to flurry. Her toddler said, “Mommy, is summer over?”

When you grow up in New England with weather so severe and changeable, you become almost part of the weather. Not in the same way fishermen and farmers do, but we did live by the ocean and were on the water a lot. We always ‘kept a weather eye’. Weather was always the most important backdrop to any daily activity. That is because you could die. In New England during winter, you always had a trunk stocked with chains for your tires, a blanket, anti-freeze, a shovel and ice scraper, extra food, and a weather radio. If you slid off the road and got stuck in a snowbank, you could freeze before you were found and rescued. Even though we are living in a millennium of new technology and largely insulated from the elements except for the times I mentioned above, this generation and only a few prior to mine have lived exposed to it and submitted to it. For 7,000 years, men have lived by the weather, the elements, and the stars and planets.

“Cold feet” by EPrata

Anyway, I read the weather website and I was involved in this article and I became so excited when I saw God the Creator in it. The article opens this way,

“It’s that time again, time for another full moon. The one that falls directly after the Harvest Moon (which was Sept. 19) is called the Hunter’s Moon, and it happens tonight, Oct. 18.“

Hunter’s Moon. I hadn’t heard of it. I’d heard of Harvest Moon, Blue Moon, Blood Moon, but not Hunter’s Moon. The article continues:

“The Hunter’s Moon isn’t just any full moon. Like with other moons this time of year, its path — called an ecliptic — is shallow. That means for several nights in a row, the moon sits farther north on the horizon, according to EarthSky. “It’s this northward movement of the moon along the eastern horizon at moonrise,” EarthSky writes, “that gives the Hunter’s Moon its magic.“

“Typically this time of year, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. Say it appeared in the night sky at 7:00 p.m. today, tomorrow it would show up around 7:50 p.m. For several days around the Hunter’s Moon, however, it only rises 30 to 35 minutes later. (In that same example, it would emerge at 7:00 p.m. tonight, 7:30 p.m. the next.)”

“Why does this matter? Well, if you lived at a time when you needed the moonlight to harvest and hunt by, it clearly did. “The light of moon allowed farmers to harvest their crops later into the night,” O’Leary said of the September Harvest Moon. By the Hunter’s Moon in October, “it’s time to go hunting for Thanksgiving and the fall. The prey is easier to find. Rather than the moon being up in the sky an hour or two after sunset, it’s up in the sky sooner…. There’s less of a period of darkness.“

Source

“And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.” (Genesis 1:14-19)

Isn’t God so precise! He not only set the planets in the sky for lights to guide us, but just when the cycle of light diminishes yet the harvest needs to be done, He extends the light so that they can gather the crops, hunt, and provide food for themselves before winter. He thinks of everything. He is so wonderful and glorious. The more I read the word and contemplate His attributes, the more I am in awe and love Him for Himself.

Posted in creation, creator, fish tornado, God, praise

Fish tornado phenomenon photographed by Octavio Aburto

Posted on by elizabethprata

Awesome photo! Whether it is the Aurora Borealis with beach dinoflagellates photo I’d put up a few days ago, or this undersea fish tornado, the earth and the universe constantly amaze me. Our Creator is to be praised, for His intellect, creativity, and beauty. That He created man to have communion with Him and to be the worker of His garden (Genesis 2:15) is such a gift.

EarthSky.org reports, “Photographer and marine biologist Octavio Aburto captured this amazing photo of the at Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico, in the course of studying the courtship behavior of a species of Jack fish. He titled it “David and Goliath.”

The photo has left many in disbelief, though the sheer magnitude of its wonder. So Octavio Aburto has released the video of the jackfish courtship behavior to satisfy the curious and the skeptical.

The photographer hopes that your wonder at seeing “Goliath” will spark you to think more about the environment, and that is all well and good. I hope it will spark you to think more about the Creator, and His magnificent hand which created ALL that exists. And He did it in 6 days. Praise His mighty name!

“Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalms 145:3)
Posted in astronomy, creator, God, planets

Discovered: Billions of other planets

Posted on by elizabethprata

Here are three excerpts from three different media outlets, all saying the same thing: there’s billions of planets. Huh. Who knew?

An Otherworldly Discovery: Billions of Other Planets
“Astronomers said Wednesday that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet, on average, adding credence to the notion that planets are as common in the cosmos as grains of sand on the beach. The finding underscores a fundamental shift in scientific understanding of planetary systems in the cosmos. Our own solar system, considered unique not so long ago, turns out to be just one among billions.”

Milky Way may be home to billions of planets
“The Milky Way is awash in planets by the billions, and astronomers are finding more every day. There’s a tiny solar system way out there with three planets smaller than Earth, and at least three other new-found ones with a single planet flying around two suns at once. And now an international team of astronomers calculates that there must be more than 10 billion rocky planets the size of Earth within the Milky Way, perhaps even more, if planets of all kinds were counted – small ones, big ones and “gas giants” bigger than Jupiter.”

Galaxy Has 100 Billion Planets, Including ‘Star Wars’ Lookalike
“Planets orbiting other stars may be a dime a dozen in the Milky Way, but cheap hardly means boring. From a new pair of planets like Tatooine of “Star Wars” fame, each with its own pair of suns, to a trio of small rocky planets zipping around a red-dwarf star, the cosmos presents a breathtaking plethora of planetary systems. A new estimate suggests that the Milky Way’s population of planets exceeds 100 billion.”

Who knew? God knew. Now, the first article above said that the discovery engendered a “fundamental shift” in understanding about how the cosmos operates. So, humans have spent 6000 years in a misunderstanding. Billions of planets have been out there all this time, yet not only have humans not seen them, we never even knew they were there.

Why would God make so many planets if for all of human history, now at the end, we learn of their existence? Why would God do that?

I don’t know the mind of God but perhaps we could say, for His good pleasure? Because He is prolific? Because His mind is infinite and therefore infinitely creative? For our good pleasure that after we are glorified and in heaven we can see them and praise His handiwork?

Isn’t that just like a Creator God to lavish upon Himself and upon us a sparkling array of planetary jewels across the black velvet of the universe.

Teeming with life? This artist’s impression shows how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way

Genesis 1:1-10

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.

Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

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Posted in creator, frozen planet

Frozen Planet: amazing photos

Posted on by elizabethprata

Earlier today I posted some photos of the results of the latest Coronal Mass Ejection results of hitting earth: a Northern Lights storm that was so vast it was seen in half the states and all the way south to Texas. So at that time, I’d mused on the macro; the lights sparked by the sun so far away in space and our Creator ‘out there.’

But now here is a look at the micro. Our Creator makes small things too! A wonderful series on BBC hosted Sir David Attenborough returns to tv with yet another series of glorious scenery and marvel from our world. This time, it’s the polar regions. Here is a slide show of 19 photos from this latest episodes. Amazing!!

A couple of my favorites, that in my opinion, especially reflect His glory in creativity.

“Cameramen Doug Anderson and Hugh Miller created a bespoke underwater tripod which they bolted to the ice ceiling. They were able to get extraordinarily stable, macro shots of theses amazing ice formations or ‘ice chandeliers’, which were inhabited by millions of tiny ice fish whose bodies were full of anti-freeze. Under ice diving is not for the faint-hearted – it is the most high risk diving in the world. Our crew dived a record 110 times in one Antarctic season and spent hours under the ice capturing this magical world.”

“Snowflake close up detail – this is filmed with unique macro technology developed especially for the shot.”

He is so wonderful! Imagine how New Jerusalem looks!

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Posted in creator, God, very large telescope

Time lapse of night sky through Very Large Telescope. Beautiful!

Posted on by elizabethprata

Incredible time lapse short movie of the earth’s sky at night through the Very Large Telescope observatory in Chile, one of the finest observatories in one of the darkest sites on the planet.

Discover Magazine says,”A couple of things I want to point out: at 1:10 into the video, you see the Milky Way rising majestically over the mountains, and you can see a faint, whitish glow stretching diagonally across the field of view, at an angle to the galaxy. That’s called the zodiacal light, and is caused by the reflection of sunlight by dust in the plane of our solar system. It’s probably due to eons of collisions grinding asteroids into dust; they tend to orbit the Sun in the same plane as the planets. It’s actually a disk of dust, but since we’re in it, we see it as a line across the sky. It’s pretty faint, and you need dark skies to spot it.”

A couple of things I want to point out. First,  it is very beautiful. The following verses are appropriate to ponder this beauty:

‘When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;” (Psalm 83)

“He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them. (Psalm 147:4)

“Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26.

We serve a mighty and wonderful Creator!! Watch in awe and praise Him!

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Posted in creator, evolution

Our wonderful Creator

Posted on by elizabethprata

Regular readers of this blog know that I love nature. I love the intricacies of how God created it all for His good and His glory. I love the macro. These are the large items in nature and the large complex systems- the sunsets and meteors and aurora borealis, the green flash, gravity, earthquakes, and black holes. I love the micro. These are the small systems- atoms and their electrons, mollusks, insect anatomy, rocks and the minerals they contain.

Regular readers also know that as a bible-believing fundamentalist, I adhere to the bible’s presentation of the creation in Genesis. It happened by the Word of God, over six days, and that’s that. And since God created the world, He created all its intricacies. The plants, insects, animals and humans and their complex interactions, whether symbiotic or parasitic.

Here are some examples of the intricacies I especially enjoy. These could not have evolved, but were made by the Ancient of Days who called them into being. In this first example of His creativity, I note that though the headline says the secret is unveiled the article actually says that ‘scientists are one step closer to unlocking the secret’:

Source Of Spider Silk’s Extreme Strength Unveiled
“The strength of spider dragline silk exceeds that of any material produced in laboratories, by far. All attempts to manufacture threads of similar strength have failed thus far,” explains Professor Horst Kessler, Carl von Linde Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at the TU Muenchen (TUM-IAS). In collaboration with the workgroup of Prof. Thomas Scheibel, who was a researcher at the TU Muenchen until 2007 and who now holds a chair of the Institute of Biomaterials at the Universitaet Bayreuth, Professor Kessler’s team has been researching for years to unveil the secret of spider silk.” … “How do spiders manage to first store the silk proteins in the silk gland and to then assemble them in the spinning passage in a split second to form threads with these extraordinary characteristics? And what exactly gives the threads their tremendous tensile strength?”

The scientists explain what happens inside a spider when it is not spinning its web:

“Spider threads consist of long chains of thousands of repeating sequences of protein molecules. These silk proteins are stored in the silk gland in a highly concentrated form until they are needed. The long chains with their repeating sequences of protein molecules are initially unordered and must not get too close to each other as they would immediately clump up. Only in the spinning passage, just before being used, are the threads oriented parallel to each other and form so-called micro crystallites that are, in turn, assembled to stable threads with cross links.”

Right. Like that evolved. How did the spider evolve its proteins in such a way that it could tell them to order themselves into a spinning passage in perfect harmony and tensile strength that escapes anything humans can reproduce? What a great God we have to create a universe that has a perfectly ordered and functioning system in all things, in everything, including the silk spider!

Here is a snippet of the symbiosis that occurs between a moth and a moth mite:

“In one particular symbiotic relationship between mites and moths, mites of the genus Dicrocheles infest one “ear” of a moth. The moth’s ear has three chambers, one of which is separated from the other two by the eardrum. The mites crawl into the moth’s ear to lay their eggs, and in the process puncture the delicate eardrum, leaving the moth deaf in that ear. However, the mites are careful to colonize only one ear, because if they were to colonize both ears, the moth would be fully deaf and would be unable to hear approaching bats. The bat would eat the mites along with the moth.”

Dr. Asher Treat is the foremost expert on moth ear mites. He wrote in the Journal of Entomology 1957:

Good question indeed. Though the mites didn’t know of the danger of infesting both moth’s ears, they avoid it completely and universally by only infesting one ear. How did that come about? Not by evolution. God is wonderful indeed.

Consider the pesky barnacle. It adheres to a boat’s hull and when enough of them accumulate, they slow the craft to nail biting, foot stomping frenzies. When we scraped the barnacles off our sailboat, the average speed over ground increased by a knot and a half. Then again, if you ever scraped barnacles, you know how hard they are to get off. Their cement is legendary.

BARNACLE
“Barnacle cement, the substance the animals use to glue themselves to ships’ bottoms and to rocks, has attracted the interest of doctors. A layer of this cement three tenthousandths of an inch thick over one square inch will support a weight of 7000 pounds. It is even stronger than epoxy cement. At temperatures above 6000°F the glue will soften but not melt, and at 380°F the cement will not crack. It does not dissolve in most strong acids, alkalies, organic solvents, or water. If man could learn to manufacture this cement, which barnacles have been using for millions of years, it could be used to mend broken bones and hold fillings in teeth.”

The Journal of Biological Chemistry says that for the barnacle “To adhere effectively, the cement needs to accomplish several functions such as coagulation, displacement of water from the substratum, establishment of interfacial contact, and molecular attraction between dissimilar materials.”

JPK Industries in the UK writes,

Right. Like that evolved.

I always have loved the beauty of shells. They are stunning in their delicacy and colorful beauty. Did you know that when a mollusk is born, its apex part of the shell is born with it? This starter part of the shell is called the protoconch.

It is a photo of the Ass’s Ear Abalone, and this is what a mature shell looks like:

As the animal inside the shell grows the animal secretes exactly enough calcium (in beautiful patterns too) that he will need to live at the upcoming size in the chamber. Like this Turritella

So this has been an interlude of praise for a Creator of extreme intelligence, creativity, beauty, and love. he created this world for humans to populate in order that we might worship Him, and once sin is vanquished (Daniel 9:24) He will restore all to its perfect glory. And blessedly, our current state of imperfect worship and praise that I am exhibiting even now, will become perfect toward Him. As it should be.

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Posted in creator, end time, hispanic speech, obama not a christian, prophecy

UPDATED. Obama can’t even SAY "God": at Hispanic speech, deliberately omits "Creator"

Posted on by elizabethprata

Update at bottom.

Friday night Obama spoke to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in a half-hour speech. When he got to the part about what unites us, you know, the Indians and the Mexicans and the Dutch and British and so on, even after “we didn’t always get along,” what eventually bound us together, what made us all Americans, are ‘faith and fidelity to shared values we all hold so dear…’ and then Obama speaks the first words to the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal….. endowed with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Notice anything missing?

Obama’s version:
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal….. endowed with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

The American version:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

When he gets to the part on the teleprompter where it says “Creator,” he pauses for a long time and narrows his eyes, slides his eyes away from the prompter, and continues by omitting Creator, practically spitting out the words in the rest of the sentence. I’m not kidding. A chill wind did blow. See below. Apparently we do not all share the same values, then.

Obama’s glower.

Slide over to to 22:36 in time.

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19)

HT to American Thinker.

UPDATE:

Thinking further about this. Obama should stand by our foundational documents AS WRITTEN, not leaving off words he doesn’t like. Omit “Creator’ today, ‘equal’ tomorrow? Look at how it changes:

Obama hypothetical version:
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal….. endowed by their Creator with certain rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

The American version:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Obama hypothetical version:
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

The American version:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Secondly, it spends a drastic message. First, of course is what I as a believer find sacrilegious: omitting the Creator from anything is a bad message to send. But even more, that we can omit words we find distasteful from the foundational documents means we can change them. Today verbally. Tomorrow as written. And if we can omit words we find distasteful we can also add words we find tasteful. And if the Chief Executive can do it, so can governments of all kinds, on down from the Oval Office to the smallest village’s charter.

In today’s society, nothing is absolute. Truth, morals, right, wrong are all relative. Apparently also in our Chief Executive Officer’s mind, are our most basic governmental principles are ripe for the editing. He showed it today. What will tomorrow bring?