Beautiful

Sometimes, rather than speaking out, or deep study, we need to just relax and enjoy what the Lord has set before us.  I guess this is why I like photography so much.  It gets me out into our Lords creation and I can just relax and enjoy Yahweh's handy work. 




I was presented with this spectacular sunrise while traveling in Tennessee.  I pretty much had to stop because it was distracted driving, lol.






I ran across this little pond in southern Iowa.  So peaceful and relaxing.




Sometimes God reminds us of His promises through nature.




The lesser light to rule the night.





Storms are some of my personal favorites.  Such great beauty combined with awesome power.





Or the winter snows that cover everything in pure white.





Our God is an Awesome God.  He has given us so much to enjoy.  All praises to the Most High.

Weather of Biblical Proportions

When one brings up Weather of Biblical proportions, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  Disaster.  We immediately think about huge floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and such things.  We immediately begin thinking in terms of God’s judgment upon mankind for whatever wrongs man has done.  While certainly there is some truth to that, it is certainly not the whole story, or really even a majority of the story.

 
Let me ask you, who was it that created weather?  God, of course.  After 6 days of creation. God declared it all good.  This included the weather.  God had created the perfect environment for his creations to flourish in.  The temperatures were just right; the atmosphere, just right, the moisture, just right; everything was perfect.  So, what happened?  Why isn’t the weather always perfect today?

The fall of man, that is what happened.  When Adam and Eve sinned, the environment changed.  New kinds of plants were introduced and a change in relationship between man and beast occurred.  The soil no longer brought forth its fruit abundantly, but man had to work at it.  This would also indicate that the weather had changed slightly.  The moisture was not quite so perfect, the temperatures not quite so perfect.  It was still pretty good, but it had lost perfection along with man.

Over time, mankind became more and more corrupt.  His desires were no longer for the Lord.  The stench of this corruption rose up to the Lord, and the Lord decided to make some changes.  We must thank him daily that he changed his mind about destroying it all permanently, and saved Noah and his family to begin anew.  We know the story of the flood, but the side story was the major renovation of the weather.  God created what we now know today as the weather cycle.

This new weather system was really in line with where mankind was spiritually.  What was once a perfect weather environment now became a far less than perfect weather environment, but still perfectly capable of sustaining life…. most of the time.  It was also full of a lot of pitfalls and destructiveness as well; very much like our own natures.  The fickleness of this new weather regime would be used to drive our history and destinies.

The history of mankind since the days of Noah have been filled with weather driven activites.  Famines and drought have oft been the causes of great wars and/or migrations of people.   Cold has driven people into searches for new lands as well.  Victories and defeats of armies have been determined by what the weather was like.  Despite all the tumult and chaos associated with weather, we have many, many, days of beautiful weather.  

 
While we blame God for all of the disasters wrought by weather and look for signs of His return based on outrageous weather, but, do we ever really thank him for all of the wonderful and beautiful days that we do have? Do we thank him that He has kept weather in check enough that His creation can be sustained and we can enjoy it?  The true weather of Biblical proportions is that He has kept the weather in such a way that His creation can still thrive and survive, and be blessed.

 

Presupposition

When you become a Christian and start reading the Bible, you find out very quickly that there is much in the bible that the world will tell you is not true.  In fact right in the very first chapter of the very first book (Genesis) you will find all kinds of things that the bible is saying that contradict all of the schooling you ever got.  It goes against all those science shows you have ever watched.  You will start thinking about all of the very smart and learned people who have told you those contradictory things and perhaps the question runs across, well, which one is right?  The Bible?  Or all those smart scientists that contradict the Bible?

If you start to take the time to look into these things, you will find out that there are some scientists who do agree with the bible, and they Christians.  So, you find one of the articles written that appears to show scientific evidence that the bible is right and share it.  Well, then the world tells you that these “scientists” are not really scientists.  Or they will tell you they are outside of their field of expertise.  They may tell you that they are just bias and trying to make the facts fit the presupposition that the bible is true, and because of those things, you can’t believe them, or your bible.

Really though, when you are talking about the origins of life and the universe or the evolution creation debate, No one can really “prove” anything.  All any researcher can do is look at the evidence that we have in time now and make educated guesses about the way they came into being.  Those “educated” guesses are made based on the previous thought processes of the people investigating the thing.  They are making presuppositions about how something came to be based on what they believe is true about the evidence.

A presupposition is to suppose or assume beforehand; take for granted in advance, or, to require or imply as an antecedent condition: An effect presupposes a cause.  When one looks at a rock, and wonders how it got there, the presupposed mindset of the person looking at the rock will influence how they go about figuring out how it came to be.  Most unbelievers have a mindset that everything occurs naturally through the various laws of physics they believe to be true.  To them, this rock would have taken millions of years to form based on their presuppositions.   A Christian looks at the same rock and says, hmm, I wonder how God made this rock.  They will see the rock as being no more than 10,000 years old at most, based on their presupposition of creation.   So, who is right?  Both believe themselves to be right.  And with the scientists, both sides produce arguments and circumstantial evidence to support their conclusions.

 

Just like most other things in life, we will have to make a choice.  Are we going to choose to believe what man says?  Or are we going to choose to believe what the word of God says?  That can be a tough choice when overwhelmed with years of the worlds ideas crammed into your brain from your first TV shows all through schooling and life.  It gets even tougher when you find out the ridicule and rejection you will get from rejecting the worlds ideas.  It is not easy to stand against the world.  Especially when it is a topic you don’t know much about and so many “experts” are telling you the Bible is wrong, and so few within a closed circle showing you the Bible is right.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

The Bible could not put it any clearer and more direct.  The natural man, those that seek after purely natural answers to the questions of life cannot and will not concede that a god even exists, much less Yahweh of the bible.  For them to think the answers of how we and everything got here is God IS foolishness to them, and they will tell you so.  Not only can’t they know, but they have no desire to know.

Job 21:14

Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.

Just remember that he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man (I Corinthians 2:15)  We CAN know these things.  We know the bible to be true not by naturalistic evidence, but by spiritual evidence.  The Holy spirit bears witness to us that the Bible is true.  We know it to be true by applying it in our lives and seeing the results.  We know it to be true by answered prayers, and miraculous helps.   We HAVE evidence that the unsaved does not have, and cannot comprehend. We don’t have to presuppose God, we know Yahweh. 

Coexistence of Man and Dinosaur

In the Bible, and in the book of Job specifically, there are great creatures depicted that seem to be describing dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs, according to the theory of evolution, lived billions of years ago in some distant past and disappeared long before any humans came on the scene.  Yet, we keep finding evidences that man and dinosaurs coexisted just as the Bible said.
The reason for the denial of coexistence comes from a man named Charles Lyell, a lawyer who set about to remove science and history from the Bible.  He postulated what is now known as the geologic column.  The geologic column is what most science uses as a gauge to age what is found buried in the ground.  They say they can tell the age of the rocks by the fossils found in them, and know the age of the fossils by the rocks they are found in; circular logic that makes no sense.
In more modern times science has come up with radiometric dating to date fossils and thus the age of the rocks they are found in.  There are a lot of assumptions made to make this work.  The samples would have to have been uncontaminated, and the parent element must have been the only one present at the time the rock was formed.  Neither of those assumptions are accurate in the real world though.  Contamination happens in the real world, and rocks are not birthed with only one element present.  It is also very poor when dating sedimentary rock, which is where most fossils are found. 
The bible says that there was a flood.  This is evidence by the fact that you find most fossils in sedimentary layers.  Fossils are only formed when they are quickly buried.  The way fossils are formed, the amount of fossils and their sudden appearance coincide with a flood event.  The fact we find fossils worldwide is also in line with a worldwide flood.   Through scientific observation and experimentation it has been shown that many rock layers can be formed rapidly, not laid out slowly over millions of years.
The biggest evidences come from human artifacts themselves.  It has only been in modern times that we have “discovered” dinosaurs, and only in more recent times have we come to recognize the many different kinds and what they might have looked like…  or so we think.  Yet, cultures and peoples of the past have left evidences of dinosaurs, pictured accurately with what we now know them to look like, hundreds, and even thousands of years before dinosaurs were “discovered”.
So, how do we get an accurate picture of a stegosaurus on a Cambodian Temple hundreds of years before dino’s were discovered? 
http://fallenangels.ning.com/photo/stegasarus-1?xg_source=activity#!/photo/cambodian-temple-with?context=user
How come we find dinosaurs accurately portrayed on the burial stones of ancient Peruvians?
http://www.crystalinks.com/icadinofish.jpg
Why do we find accurate clay figurines of dinosaurs in Mexico that date to 2500 BC?
http://thecryptozoologist.webs.com/apps/blog/show/21162500-compelling-evidence-that-dinosaurs-and-humans-coexisted-

We find these things all over the world and in many different cultures.
http://sheperdmoonlight.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/dino-ancient-dinosaur-depictions/

We also have the accounts of dragons, that when examined in their descriptions, are dinosaurs.  To be able to describe these creatures, they had to have been seen by humans as they were “undiscovered” in the fossil form during those times.
http://www.nwcreation.net/dinosdragons.html

These are but a few of the evidences that dinosaurs and humans did coexist as told of in the Bible, and that in fact they existed even until the middle ages.  Even today there are scattered reports from various remote locations if dinosaur like creatures existing today.  We get them in Africa, the islands of New Guinea, and such very remote places.  Even something like the loch ness monster seems to have been described much like a dinosaur.

Most scientists today totally dismiss these ideas as they are certain that their evolutionary model is the right one.  They put these accounts into the realms of mythology so they can be easily dismissed, and anyone who endeavors to research such things is labeled a crackpot.  Science has been wrong before and could be again concerning the dinosaur coexistence with man.  The evidence is overwhelming that humans have seen and accurately pictured these creatures for which there would have been no other way to know about them, except that they coexisted.

Original Faith

People seem to get history so confused.  I am constantly running into people who try to say that the God of the bible, Yahweh, was merely an idea borrowed from other cultures and incorporated into a new religion that man invented.  Then they go on to say that Christianity was just a religion that branched away from Judaism.  They argue the stories of the bible were taken from other cultures and religions as well.  I think they have their history wrong.

Why would their history be wrong?  The main reason being is that they first do not believe in Yahweh.  They see Him as just another in the long line of man-made religions throughout time.  The other thing that makes them wrong is that they work their history backwards.  They start in the now and work back.  History starts at the beginning and works forward.  Since they do not go back far enough to get to the beginning, they cannot draw the proper conclusions about what started when.

In the Beginning, Yahweh create the heavens and the earth.  He created man in His own image.  The relationship between God and Adam & Eve is what I refer to as original faith.  There was an open relationship between Yahweh and His creation.  Then, sin entered the picture and that relationship was broken.  Over time, mankind grew away from Yahweh, forgot Him, and created their own religions, their own gods.  From Adam to Noah, all of mankind except Noah and his sons did not even care to know Yahweh, so, He started over with Noah and his boys, back to original faith.

Again, as time went by and man multiplied in the earth, they forgot Yahweh.  They did retain some of the stories and adapted them into their own man-made beliefs.  It is one reason why almost every religion has a flood story.  They borrowed it from the reality.  But, they did not care to keep Yahweh in their hearts.  One day though, Yahweh chose a man out of them, Abram.  Yahweh made a promise to Abram, and Abram believed it.  Yahweh had chosen a people for himself for original faith.

As Abrams descendent grew and multiplied, they retained a religion, but forgot the creator.  So, when the creator sent His son Jesus into the world, they did not recognize Him.  Some would argue that this was when Christianity started.  Not really.  This was one again going back to original faith.  Yahweh was repairing the relationship that he had lost with Adam, through His son Jesus.  This was merely a continuation of original faith.

Since then, then apostles went throughout the world, telling all of how through Jesus, the son of the living I Am, original faith has been restored; that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the relationship has been repaired for all who would believe on him who Yahweh sent.  Since that time, Man has screwed it up again.  Christianity today is nothing like what it was meant to be.  We have once again forgotten the creator and made a religion.  If history is to be believed, Yahweh will once again move to re-institute original faith universally.  Those who have believed on Jesus have had that original faith restored and will be with Yahweh as He renews all. 

Yahweh has not changed over time.  We have.  Yahweh was not made up from other religions, other religions were made up by man as they forgot the original faith.  The day is coming soon when those who have held the original faith will be restored and rewarded; and original faith will be the only faith.