Proverbs 8:32-33

​Are you hungry to learn more about God's magnificent creation and teach your family what they need to know to defend the faith from the pseudoscience of evolution? Of course, the Creation Moments website is a great place to start.

But there are other ways to learn about biblical creation – including outstanding books and DVDs on the six days of creation, the worldwide flood and so much more. Another great way is to visit the big Creation Museum near Cincinnati. But what if a trip there can't be worked into your family's vacation plans? You can visit one of the many other creation museums scattered all across the United States and in other countries around the globe.

So how do you find out where these museums are located and what each one has to offer? The Creation Science Alliance – of which Creation Moments is a member – is a network of creation ministries and museums around the world, and they have put together the "Big Map of Creation" that makes it easy to find creation tours and museums near you. Simply point your web browser to VisitCreation.org to get started.

On this map, you are sure to find sound doctrine and dependable science at any location your family chooses to visit, and you'll see fossils and dinosaur bones up close. These smaller museums are also great because your family will receive personal attention from trained creation tour guides.

We highly recommend a creation museum tour for your next vacation.

Notes: www.VisitCreation.org. Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

An Indian company has announced a new smartphone priced at $7. Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 phone has 8GB storage and rear and front facing cameras. The smartphone age has brought every good and evil thing to people’s fingertips, including the fingertips of children. In Israel, 83% of children aged 8-15 are in possession of a smartphone; 93% use their mobile devices for at least four hours every day; half say they are online within 15 minutes after waking, connecting with friends via social networks like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Snapchat. A typical teen exchanges 3,400 texts per month (116 texts per day). The smartphone and the Internet are simply tools, yet the moral and spiritual danger is great. In our new youth discipleship course, we show how that the home, the church, and young people can work together to protect God’s people from the pitfalls of the smartphone age.The Mobile Phone and the Christian Home and Church is available in print and a free eBook edition from www.wayoflife.org.

(Friday Church News Notes, February 26, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

“A growing number of young girls are being forced to marry in Iran, UN rights experts warned Thursday, decrying laws permitting sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine. ... A growing number of ‘girls at the age of 10 years or younger … are subjected to forced marriages to much older men,’ the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said. Compounding the problem were laws allowing sex with girls as young as nine, and a lack of criminalization for sexual abuse of even younger children, it said. ... The committee also raised a range of other disturbing issues, including the fact that boys in the country are considered criminally responsible at the age of 15, and girls at nine. This means children down to those ages can be subjected to ‘sentences involving torture or cruel, degrading treatment of punishment,’ it said.”

​“Rising number of Iranian girls,” Times of Israel, Feb. 5, 2016

“British Police have promised not to tolerate any speech that could cause offence on social media regarding Syrian migrants, after arresting a man for Facebook comments made about recent arrivals on his small Scottish Island. The tiny Isle of Bute in the Firth of Clyde, which had a total population of just 6,498 in 2011, is expected to take in around 1,000 Syrian migrants, with 12 families already arriving since December last year. However, commenting on the comparatively huge and sudden influx of Muslim immigrants online just became a very risky business for local residents. Police have confirmed they have arrested a 41-year-old local man under the Communications Act, after receiving a report of a supposedly ‘offensive’ comment made on Facebook regarding the migrants. A police spokesman was unequivocal, that any harsh criticism of the Muslim influx would not be ‘tolerated.’ Inspector Ewan Wilson from Dunoon police office told the Guardian following the arrest: ‘I hope that the arrest of this individual sends a clear message that Police Scotland will not tolerate any form of activity which could incite hatred and provoke offensive comments on social media.’ Some have taken the sudden arrest and draconian threat from the local Police as a sign that the European approach to policing discussion and critique of mass migration of social media may be coming to the UK.”

​“British Police Arrest Man for Syrian Migrants Facebook Post,” Breitbart, Feb. 16, 2016

Elias Boudinot (1740-1821), President of the Continental Congress and framer of the U.S. Bill of Rights, wrote to his daughter as follows: “For nearly half a century have I anxiously and critically studied that invaluable treasure [the Bible]; and I still scarcely ever take it up that I do not find something new--that I do not receive some valuable addition to my stock of knowledge or perceive some instructive fact never observed before. In short, were you to ask me to recommend the most valuable book in the world, I should fix on the Bible as the most instructive both to the wise and ignorant. Were you to ask me for one affording the most rational and pleasing entertainment to the inquiring mind, I should repeat, it is the Bible; and should you renew the inquiry for the best philosophy or the most interesting history, I should still urge you to look into your Bible. I would make it, in short, the Alpha and Omega of knowledge” (The Age of Revelation, or the Age of Reason Shown to Be an Age of Infidelity, 1801, p. xv, from the “Dedication: Letter to his daughter Susan Bradford”).


​
(Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

In a 2015 poll, only 9% of Israelis surveyed believed that the Obama administration is “pro Israel” (Shmeul Rosner, “How bad do Israelis think Obama is?” Jewish Journal, April 28, 2015). That was down from 21% in 2012. The survey by Menachem Lazar of Panels Politics found that 81% of religious Jewish Israelis call the Obama administration “pro-Palestinian.” When asked what American president of the last thirty years was “worst for Israel,” Obama won hands down (with 63%). Jimmy Carter was a very distant second with 16%, with other presidents (George H. W. and George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton) were barely mentioned in the worst for Israel category.

(Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

2 Corinthians 2:15

​As one perfume expert puts it, "It's beyond comprehension how beautiful it is. It's transformative. Its like an olfactory gemstone."

The perfumer was describing ambergris, a waxy excretion found in the intestines of sperm whales. Since most countries have made it illegal to slaughter sperm whales, ambergris is very hard to come by. In fact, it is almost worth its weight in gold. As one beachcomber observed, "There aren’t too many professions where you could go to work and stumble upon $30,000 one morning."

Bloomberg Business writes, "To outsiders, it may seem like easy money – ambergris can wash ashore anywhere there are sperm whales." Ironically, many ambergris hunters don’t even know which whale orifice it comes from. As neuroscientist Chris Kemp said, "Despite what most people think, it is not vomit. That's one of the biggest misnomers about ambergris. Unfortunately, it comes out the other end."

Sure enough, ambergris smells like perfumed cow dung. What makes ambergris so special is that it amplifies the other fragrances found in perfumes. As one perfumer noted, "It alters the quality of the existing notes and makes them bigger, deeper and more expansive than they can ever be on their own."

Unlike fragrant perfumes, sinful man has nothing within himself that smells good before a holy God. And if you amplify our natural scent, we only smell worse. But when Christ enters our lives, we give off the sweet-smelling aroma of Christ to others. Best of all, we smell good to God, too!

Notes: Eric Spitznagel, "Ambergris, Treasure of the Deep," Bloomberg Business, 1/12/12. Photo: photographed by Peter Kaminski. (CC BY 2.0). Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Vintage Church of New Orleans is fighting an injunction by Jefferson Parish that requires that it not exceed 60 decibels of noise. The church is meeting in a tent while constructing a permanent building, and after neighbors complained of the noise of their rock music, the local government issued the injunction. After a district court judge refused to lift the injunction, the legal battle has now moved to the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. One neighbor told the local newspaper, “My daughter’s a nurse, works a 13-hour shift, and she couldn’t get to sleep. This has been going on for four months. It’s frustrating. I’m not the only one complaining. We all can hear it. [Other neighbors] are complaining, too” (Time-Picayunes, Dec. 15, 2015). If the church would forego its imitation of the world’s music and sing hymns accompanied by non-electric instruments, it probably wouldn’t be having this problem and wouldn’t be offending its neighbors and having to spend money on legal fees.

(Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

John 4:14

​While visiting Niagara Falls in 1840, Charles Lyell was told that the falls were receding at about three feet per year. This was based on what eyewitnesses who lived in that region had reported. But for reasons Lyell did not disclose, this lawyer-turned-geologist concluded that a "much more likely conjecture" – his words, not mine – is that the rate of erosion was only one foot per year. At this rate, it showed that Niagara Falls had been flowing for 35,000 years. Now, why would Lyell make such a conjecture?

Dr. Henry Morris answers that question in his book The Long War Against God. "Lyell's work at Niagara," wrote Morris, "accomplished its main goal – that of calling Scripture into question. For biblical chronology cannot allow 35,000 years since Noah's Flood. And if Genesis is wrong, how can we trust any other portion?"

So how fast is Niagara Falls really receding? Though there is some dispute over this, I believe that the most accurate measurements show the rate of recession to be over six feet per year. This means that the age of Niagara Falls turns out to be less than 6,000 years, a near confirmation of the date proposed by Bishop Ussher for the age of the Earth.

Since Darwin's theory of evolution requires a very ancient Earth – and he used Lyell's writings to support that view – where does that leave evolution? Truly, the more one knows about evolution and its anti-God agenda, the less scientific it appears.

Notes: Henry Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 189 (Master Books, 1989). See also Ian Taylor," The Age of the Earth," http://www.creationmoments.com/content/age-earth. Photo: Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Heditor6. (CC BY-SA 4.0). Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

“President Obama has continually asserted that Islam was ‘woven into the fabric’ of the United States since its founding. Obama claims that Muslims have made significant contributions to the building of this nation. The claim is laughable to anyone who has studied US history. Historian David Barton ... found the first real contribution any Muslim made was in 1856 (80 years after the founding) when then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis hired one Muslim to help train camels in Arizona. ... But Muslims did have an influence on early America, and that influence was one of a foe. ... American vessels [were] raided and plundered by Muslim pirates from the Barbary Coast. After agreeing to pay 10% of the new nation’s dismal GDP in exchange for passage, attacks continued. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were sent as representatives to mediate the problem. It was there that they discovered that the Islamic law the pirates followed made it their duty to attack non-Muslims. ... Ben Franklin wrote of his experience: ‘Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book (the Qur’an) forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.’ John Adams, in his report to John Jay, wrote of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, and called him a ‘military fanatic’ who ‘denies that laws were made for him; he arrogates everything to himself by force of arms.’ By the time Jefferson became president the Barbary Coast was extorting 25% of US GDP and attacks were still occurring. Jefferson wasted no time in signing a war powers request which launched the US’s entire naval fleet to wage war on the Barbary pirates.”

“What the Founders Thought,” Keith Farrell, The Federalist Papers Project: