“Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off” (Romans 11:22).

(The word “goodness” is elsewhere translated “gentleness” Gal. 5:22 and “kindness” 2 Cor. 6:6; Col. 3:12; Titus 3:4.) The phrase “the goodness and severity of God” summarizes the two aspects of God’s character that seem, to fallen man, to be contradictory and confusing. How can God be good and yet severe? How can He be good when He allows suffering to exist in this world? How can He be a God of love and yet consign men to eternal hellfire? These are questions that men have wrestled with for millennia. The answer is at once simple and complex; the answer lies in God’s character. We have to deal with the God that exists rather than the god we would create after our own thinking, which is an idol. We have to trust the revelation God has given us, for we have no other way to know about God’s character. We can learn of God’s power and wisdom through the light of creation, but we cannot know His character apart from a higher revelation, which God has graciously given us in Scripture. There we find that the God that exists is good; He is compassionate and loving beyond comprehension; but He is also holy and just; He is a righteous lawgiver and a judge of rebellion. Both aspects of God’s character are clearly evident in the Cross, the central event in history. There we see the severity of God, the awfulness of His justice, the depth of his holiness whereby He would require His own Son to suffer so; but there we see, too, the amazing goodness of God in taking the just punishment of His own creatures upon Himself. What severity; what goodness! In truth, the severity of God is part of and perfectly compatible with His goodness. It is good that God is righteous, holy, and just. This is the foundation of law and order in the created universe. If God did not make righteous laws for His creatures and if He did not enforce those laws, there would be chaos and anarchy, as we see in this present world. While the scofflaw might see laws and police and courts as severe, society understands that these are good. “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God.”

(Friday Church News Notes, May 17, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Romans 8:19-21
"For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

It's not exactly a plant, but it's not completely an animal either. It crawls like an animal and then grows fruits and sows seed like a plant on colorful stalks. Sometimes it acts like a single-celled creature with a refined social order. And sometimes all those single living cells fuse into one giant organism.

Scientists aren't sure whether the strange and fascinating form of life which goes by the inglorious name cellular slime mold is a plant or actually an animal.

In the normally moist forest floor, single amoebas invisible to the naked eye, live in the moisture and food provided by the decaying vegetation. But if the floor of the forest begins to dry or food is scarce, the amoebas congregate. As they come together, they combine into a tiny slug, about a millimeter long and large enough to see. This group now behaves like a little creature and crawls to meet others of its kind who may be found standing on top of each other forming a living "stalk". More groups join to form a mass of spores at the top that "hatch" into individual amoebas when conditions are again just right for them.

There is no simple life form; even cellular slime mold shows the Creator's touch in its wonderful complexity and amazing way of life

Photo: Courtesy of KeresH. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Oklahoma tornado destroys 13,000 homes;
IRS official declines to testify before House committee;
Britain says London attack appears terror-related;
Philadelphia cat rides bike with her owner

Oklahoma residents come home to pick up the pieces;
Arias talks to media as jurors begin deliberating her fate;
Anthony Weiner launches bid for NYC mayor;
New York Rangers on brink of elimination.

About 2,500 years ago, during the Persian Empire, an angel told the prophet Daniel, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4). We are seeing a dramatic fulfillment of this in our day. Recent inventions include the following:

(1) Research into graphene is increasing dramatically with large potential for commercial applications. Though the material was only identified in 2004, more than 7,000 patents have been filed. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms, is the thinnest material ever made by man. Said to be stronger than diamond, more conductive than copper, and as flexible as rubber, graphene holds huge promise for a host of applications from IT to energy to medicine (“Graphene,” BBC News, Jan. 15, 2013).

(2) A replacement living ear is about three years away from reality. The bio-engineered ear is made by printing a 3D mold of an ear and then filling it with living cow ear cells and collagen (“3D-printed Ear Created in Lab,” Fox News, Feb. 21, 2003). Jason Spector, with Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, says the process takes less than two days and it could be possible to implant one in a human in as few as three years.

(3) Nano body parts can be reproduced the same way using a newly announced microscopic 3D printer. Produced by the German company Nanoscribe GmbH, the printer can make three-dimensional objects smaller than the width of a human hair quickly with maximum resolution (“The world’s fastest microscopic 3D printer,” Fox News, Feb. 20, 2013). “Printing three-dimensional objects in such incredibly fine detail, opens up many areas in which it could be useful, ranging from defense to medicine. For biomedical technology or nanotechnology, the 3D printer could be used to create tailor-made construction parts.”

(4) Brain scans can tell what a person is thinking. Brain imagining technology (functional magnetic resonance imaging) is making great strides and can now identify what number people have just seen, what memory they are recalling, and can even reconstruct videos of what a person has watched (“Your Brain Scans,” Business Insider, March 13, 2013).

(Friday Church News Notes, May 17, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Genesis 1:27
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

What was man like as originally created – before sin started taking its toll on his mind, body and the world in which he lives?

Are there hints around us of the original capabilities of the human brain? Keep in mind that each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. The so-called savant has a low IQ, yet is capable of incredible mental feats.

"K," at the age of 28, has a mental age of 11 and a vocabulary of only 58 words. But he could remember the population of every U.S. city of more than 5,000 people, every county seat in the nation, and the names, locations and number of rooms in over 2,000 hotels.

Leslie Lemke is a musical genius. He can play any music after hearing it only once. He once played every note of a 45-minute piece perfectly after hearing it for the first time! We might be reminded that at 14 the young Mozart was taken by his father to hear the famous Miserere. He memorized it note for note, wrote it down and a few days later played it at a concert, causing a sensation. But Mozart was no savant.

God created man in His own image and, whether genius or savant, these are living evidence of man's continuing regression from a once-noble origin.     

Photo: Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins (1849 – 1908) was an African American autistic savant and musical prodigy on the piano. He had numerous original compositions published and had a lengthy and largely successful performing career throughout the United States. During the 19th century, he was one of the most well-known American performing pianists.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Oklahoma's governor pledges rebuilding after tornado;
Apple CEO takes on tax critics;
Arizona woman seeks to avoid death penalty;
Is the pope an exorcist?

Dozens dead in Oklahoma tornado;
Utah "missing mom" investigation closed;
British auction of Ghandi's belongings triggers controversy;
Red Wings top Black Hawks in NHL playoffs.

More soft tissue has been discovered among creatures that are supposedly millions of years old. This time it is an ancient camel that was found in Canada’s high Arctic. The Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa claims that it is 3.5 million years old, but the remains are mummified, not fossilized, and fragments of collagen are preserved (“Ancient Arctic camel a curious conundrum,” Fox News, March 5, 2013). In 2008, a “2-million-year-old” fossil ape was discovered in Malapa, South Africa, with skin attached. That same year BBC News reported on fossil feathers that have retained their biological pigment colors. In 2009, researchers reconstituted dried ink from a “150 million-year-old” fossil squid’s ink sac. That was also the year of the discovery of Darwinius masillae, an alleged 47-million-year-old missing link with preserved soft tissue. A mosasaur fossil (a 40-foot-long marine reptile) at the Dinosaur Institute of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County, supposedly millions of years old, has retina pigment, dried blood residue, and “preservation of skin structures from all parts of the body.” In 2011 PLoS ONE reported a “34-million-year” old cuttlefish fossil with organic chitin remaining in the cuttlebone. Other researchers found chitin in a scorpion that is supposedly hundreds of millions of years old. Scientists studying these discoveries admit they don’t know how it is possible for biomaterial to last millions of years. Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol asks, “How do you square that with the well-known FACT that the majority of organic molecules decay in thousands of years?” (“Fossil Feathers Reveal Their Hues,” BBC News, July 8, 2008). The only answer they have is that since they KNOW that the fossils are millions of years old, it must therefore be possible for bio-material to last millions of years, even though this goes against known FACTS! This isn't science; it’s circular reasoning; it’s myth making. In fact, the soft tissue is evidence against the evolutionary dating scheme and supports a young earth position, because laboratory studies have consistently shown that even well-preserved collagen should turn to dust in 30,000 years.

(Friday Church News Notes, May 17, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Psalm 1:1-3
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

In many ways, a plant is like a machine that changes the energy of sunlight into food energy that is needed by the rest of the living world. The energy which runs the plant is light.

Now, if you were going to design a better, more efficient plant, how might you do it? Obviously, one way to improve a plant would be to create one that can do its job with less light. But remember, the plant cannot store more energy than it receives. And if the plant was too sensitive to light, a strong dose of sunlight could kill it. The obvious solution is to outfit the plant with tiny lenses which focus even dim light into the chemical centers where photosynthesis takes place.

Due to man's ignorance, modern science has often regarded plants as if they were simple, unsophisticated forms of life. Now scientists have discovered that many plants do indeed have special cells which focus and concentrate the available light into the very centers where it is needed. One plant's shaded leaves were found to intensify available light by 26 times. And if the light gets so strong that it could damage the leaves, the light is focused onto cells which can absorb the extra light.

Plants are much more complex, higher-performance living things than we ever suspected. Plants incorporate designs based on a highly sophisticated knowledge of both chemistry and physics. What a wonderful witness they are to our Creator!

Photo: Courtesy of Mnolf. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com