American hostage pleas to Obama;
Amazon offers refunds to customers for delays;
Thailand protests lead to violence;
Furniture made from airplane parts becomes high end art.

The following was written as a description of England in about 1861, a year or two after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species: "What with the oppositions of science falsely so called, on the one hand, and superstitious indulgence of human traditions and fancies on the other, truth is well nigh fallen in the street. Yes, the time is come when those who will cleave to the Bible, and nothing else, must be content to take the place of fools in the estimation of men around them; or to be accounted mad" (Henry Soltau, The Tabernacle, c. 1861).








(Friday Church News Notes, December 20, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

Proverbs 30:28
“The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in king’s palaces.”

About 10 percent of the 35,000 known species of spiders spin the familiar orb-shaped web. These amazing sticky silk constructions may be a few inches or even a yard across.

The first step in building an orb web is to cast out the highest horizontal silk line in the planned construction. Once both ends are anchored, the spider then pulls another strand below the anchor line into a “y” shape, then drops down while creating another silk strand to complete the leg of the “y”. Other anchor lines may be attached from the center of the “y” to solid objects before the familiar spiral of the orb-web is started. Despite all of this work, most spiders take their webs down, eating the silk as they go, every day before the sun comes up. One question that nearly everyone asks, and scientists cannot even answer, is why don’t spiders get caught in their own sticky webs?

Scientists who believe in evolution have come to the conclusion that since so many different kinds of spiders build orb webs, the knowledge and ability to do so must have evolved many times. But we think it would be absolutely amazing if it even evolved only once!

Proverbs 30:28 refers to the spider’s wisdom and skill, despite its small size. But we have to ask: Who taught the spider in the first place?

Photo: Courtesy of Rustedstrings. 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

Christmas outages across US;
Flooding hits England on Christmas;
President Obama's Christmas Day advice;
Europeans takes a polar plunge.

Pope's Christmas Message;
US Soldiers celebrate Christmas;
Court rules teen is brain dead;
Cabbie finds $300K.

"Israel Today, 1 November 2013 reported that 'a group of prominent Israeli rabbis issued a call for earnest prayers against the division of the land of Israel, as currently being negotiated by Israeli, American and Palestinian officials. ... They called on all faithful Jews to recite additional prayers pertaining to the continued unity of the land of Israel under Jewish sovereignty.' Reciting prayers will not help, for no man comes to the Father except through the Son whom the rabbis reject. Reciting prayers is vain repetition. God gave the whole land to Israel but He took them out of the land and scattered them among the nations because of their sin. They have been blinded and will continue so until they acknowledge their Saviour and King, Jesus Christ. That day will come early in the Tribulation. This does not mean that the Gentiles can claim the land, for the land really belongs to God. Joel wrote: 'I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there ... for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and PARTED MY LAND' (Joel 3:2). ... The Palestinians have no rights to the land, and Israel cannot possess it all until she repents. The time will come when the rabbis will urge true repentance as indicated in Joel 2:12-17. The growing Islamic threat will bring an invasion led by Russia in the first half of the Tribulation and Joel's prophecy will be fulfilled. Only then will all the land be theirs."

(John Ecob, Herald of Hope, December 2013)

Proverbs 8:12a, 22, 30-31a
“I wisdom dwell with prudence…The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before his works of old…Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth…”

The amazing structure of the honeycomb has fascinated scientists for thousands of years. In the third century, the astronomer and geometer, Pappus of Alexandria, became the first to offer an explanation for why the honeycomb has a hexagonal shape.

Pappus explained that only three shapes could serve as candidates for a honeycomb cell – the triangle, the square and the hexagon. Any other shape would leave wasteful open spaces between each cell. Pappus noted that the hexagon holds more honey in the same space than either a square or a triangle. It also takes less wax to build, and the shared sides of the hexagonal cells cut wax usage even further.

But it was not until the development of modern calculus that scientists could fully appreciate the shape of the caps at the end of the honeycomb cells. Each cell is capped with a pyramid composed of three rhombuses. Complex mathematics shows that this shape, too, requires the least amount of wax for construction and that it allows honeycomb cells to be butted up against each other without wasting space.

Modern scientists who accept evolution talk about the design of the honeycomb as a great accomplishment by bees. But the more sensible conclusion is obvious. The twelve-sided prism, that is, six sides plus two ends of the honeycomb, is magnificent testimony to the mathematical wisdom of the Creator Himself!

Photo: Courtesy of Waugsberg. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Egypt bomb aftermath;
Space walkers install new pump;
Stores lure last-minute shoppers;
Santa shot with pellet gun.

Same-sex weddings in Utah;
Explosion in Egypt;
Deep freeze for Upper Midwest, Northern New England;
Last game at Candlestick Park.

"Bellevue College in Washington state now offers applicants seven different options for their gender: 'feminine, masculine, androgynous, transgender, gender neutral, other, and prefer not to say.' The college says the question will help it create better services and classes for gender-variant students."



("7 Gender Options," This Week, Dec. 7, 2013)

Genesis 1:28
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth.”

In Genesis 1:28 God tells man to subdue the Earth. That command implies that God has placed, within the creation, many tools that man can learn to use for his benefit. After sin entered the world and sickness and death became a reality, God’s remarkable foreknowledge then became evident. One of the first antibiotics ever discovered by man has been in use for thousands of years. Modern researchers are just beginning to appreciate the wonder of this natural antibiotic that kills some 650 different strains of disease organisms, and is virtually non-toxic. Best of all, disease organisms don’t become resistant to it.

What is this miracle antibiotic? The metal silver. The ancient Greeks and Romans used silver containers to keep liquids fresh. American settlers often placed a silver dollar in milk to delay souring. Most of the world’s airlines today use silver filters on board to prevent dysentery. After testing 23 different methods for purifying water, NASA selected silver water filters for use on board the Space Shuttle. Japanese researchers have found that silver is even able to detoxify some poisons.

Isn't it striking that even the inanimate world is filled with things that are so carefully designed to fit into the overall picture of reality painted by Scripture? And who says the Bible isn't a book of science?!

Photo: Courtesy of Alchemist-hp. Licensed under the Creative Commons ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 3.0 (US) License.
Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

Healthcare deadline extended;
Pussy Riot freed;
South Sudan violence;
Corgis nearing endangered list.

Icy weather;
South Sudan fighting;
Aaron Hernandez in court;
Pancho Claus spreads holiday cheer.

"'I don't have a microchip in my head--yet,' says the man charged with transforming Google's relations with the technology giant's human users. But Scott Huffman does envisage a world in which Google microphones, embedded in the ceiling, listen to our conversations and interject verbal answers to whatever inquiry is posed. Huffman, Google's engineering director, leads a team tasked with making conversations with the search engine more reflective of the complex interactions people enjoy with each other. The future of the $300 billion business depends upon automatically predicting the search needs of users and then presenting them with the data they need. ... 'A microphone hanging from the ceiling, responding to verbal queries, would remove the need to whip out a phone to remind yourself what time tomorrow's flight leaves. ... Like a great personal assistant, it will interrupt you and say 'you've got to leave now.' Mr. Huffman said. ... 'I could ask my Google assistant where we should have lunch, that serves French food and isn't too expensive? Google will go ' Ok, we'll go to that place' and when I get in my car it should already be navigating to that restaurant. We're really excited by the idea of multiple devices being able to talk to each other.”... Google believes it can ultimately fulfil people's data needs by sending results directly to microchips implanted into its user's brains. Research has already begun with such chips to help disabled people steer their wheelchairs. ... His current priority is utilizing Google's Knowledge Graph, an expanding store of information holding 18 billion facts on 60 million subjects, to deliver a more 'human' search response. Voice-based search requests are more complex than the two-word searches typed into the search engine. 'My team is working very hard on the idea of a richer conversation with Google. We use a fairly complex linguistic structure in conversation that Google today doesn't understand. But five years from now we will be having that kind of conversation with Google and it will just seem natural. Google will answer you the same way a person would answer.'"

("Google's Future," The Independent, U.K., Dec. 17, 2013)