Posted on May 17, 2013
Missions and the Great Commission
The young woman waited nervously at the shore for the boat to return to carry the next load of children to safety on the other side. If someone saw them, it would be the end of Gladys Aylward and over one hundred children she had helped cross the mountains to escape. The boat was almost to the shore, and then – it was time for me to put down my book and go to supper. As a girl, between the ages of eleven and fourteen, I had a love for foreign missions. My favorite missionaries were Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, and (more recently) Katie Davis. I dreamed of going into foreign missions and helping orphaned children just like they did.
I wanted to take risks to be a friend to people who had been rejected, help those who were in need, and love unwanted children. I wanted to give hope to the hopeless and serve my Savior. I think that many Christians have those same desires – we want to make a difference in the world. We should have these desires, because we are commanded to go into all the world and teach the Gospel. However, the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) does not just apply to people in the foreign mission field and their supporters; it applies to every Christian, wherever you are, right now. The term all nations does not exclude the place you are living in right now.
On the outside, it may seem that America has never been better off, especially compared to third-world places where we send missionaries. However, there are hurting people, broken families, dying children, and a desperate need for the love of Christ all around us, right here in America. As Christians we have a responsibility to show Christ’s love to the people we see in our everyday lives. We shouldn’t let the love of Christ only be shown to other nations by just a few missionaries who we send money to and pray for occasionally; rather, all Christians should be doing what we can to love others in our ordinary lives. As for me, my dreams of loving and helping those who need it never changed, but I did decide that I am willing to do those things wherever God sends me – even if it’s just down the street. I may never leave my country or live anywhere besides the same place I was born and raised, but I will try to show the love of God and reliability of His Word to others in need wherever I am.
Posted on May 11, 2013
Using Your Gifts
What if Charles Darwin had met Gregor Mendel? This is a question that has provoked much thought from scientists throughout generations. Darwin and Mendel were contemporaries, working in similar fields. Darwin observed the results of genetic variation in the Galapagos, while Mendel was explaining why we get these variations. However, Mendel would never have tried to extrapolate genetic variation in pea plants to say that over time, pea plants could turn into anything else but pea plants. Mendel had the scientific advancement to stop the spread of evolutionary thinking, but he was living in a monastery and his writings were not even published in the same languages Darwin could understand.
Mendel had the chance to make a huge difference in the scientific community of his day, and perhaps he could have helped turn others to God through his science by explaining where Darwin was right and where he was dreadfully wrong. If Mendel had been in the world a little bit more, maybe he could have changed the world in his day and ours too. Don’t get me wrong, I love Gregor Mendel’s work and think he was an incredible scientist who saw science as a service to God. I think that maybe God wanted Mendel to do more than just study the pea plants and have a close walk with his Savior, but also to share those things with those around him. Then again, perhaps Mendel never would have ended up studying pea plants if he had not decided to be a monk.
We could go on forever about what could have happened in Mendel’s day, but it is more important to focus on what we can learn from his life to apply to our lives today. God has given us all talents and abilities to use for His glory, and He wants each one of us to learn to live every moment of our lives with Him as our constant companion. God gave us these things not just to use for ourselves, but to change the world around us for His glory. Yes, it’s more comfortable to keep our gifts and relationship with Him at home where they are safe, but God has given us those things to use. As Jesus said in Luke 12:48, “. . . For unto whomsoever much has been given, of him shall much be required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” So use what the Lord has given you – today, right where you are – to make a difference for His glory in the world around you.
Posted on May 4, 2013
Spring in My West Texas
Different parts of the earth are beautiful in their own ways. Some places have rolling hills and soft, flowered meadows, while others have colorful creatures hiding in dense vegetation. Some have breathtaking purple mountain peaks, and others show off their beauty in the quiet evenings and open skies. This is a poem about my home – the wide open plains of West Texas, with its subtle beauty.
The morning sun has yet to rise,
The coyote and the bat retreat to dark,
As the horizon, just dark, tries,
The golden light and fade the stars mark.
———————–
A mocking bird mother greets the day,
As the sun colors the east with her smile.
A cotton field green’s revealed by ray,
And people begin to rise after a while.
———————–
The morning is cool and full of life,
People and creatures work and play,
Morning light reveals dust for a wife,
To others we smile throughout the day.
———————–
Afternoon sometimes brings her heat,
But the beauty of it is, you’ll never know,
For weather is fickle: famine, then treat.
Children can play ’till the sun is low.
———————–
We don’t have many lakes or big trees,
Nor grandiose mountains of might,
Our land is flat, the sky so big and free,
We see the clouds, the rain, and lightning bright.
———————–
When the sun in the west begins to set,
It’s splendor takes your breath away.
Then stars come out, you forget to fret,
For the peace and beauty after day.
———————–
I love my West Texas every season,
Though creation’s beauty here stirs me,
Not the land, but the people are the reason,
Why in my Texas I love to be.
———————–
For ’tis more than just my home,
It’s the place God’ given me to love,
To tough the lives of a few near home,
For now, ’tis my duty for Heaven above.
Posted on April 27, 2013
Solving the Mystery
We are back in the court room, that we discussed six weeks ago in the post, “A Curious Case”. The day for the decision has arrived and you are the judge. There is a lot at stake; it’s a decision that will make an impact into eternity. Each one of us has the responsibility to find the truth and act upon it. What will you do with the information you have? What about the information you don’t have; are you willing seek the answers to your questions? And who are you going to trust?
Ichnofossils have been the primary focus of this Clue series, but there are all kinds of evidence we could go into – there is evidence regarding our origins all over every field of science, philosophy, theology, literature, art, and even music. However, evidence is always interpreted by a person, and it does not speak for itself. Although strong and convincing evidence for creation, a young earth, and the global flood are out there, that does not guarantee I can convince anyone of my view because they rely on a different set of assumptions – basic ideas that most people don’t even realize they have, but that change the way we look at everything.
Ultimately, it’s not about the evidence. Creationists and evolutionists use basically the same evidence, it is simply interpreted differently. Since all evidence is interpreted, one might conclude that it does not matter what interpretation someone takes, since they are all based on assumptions. However, not all assumptions are reasonable; many come down to circular reasoning, which is when a person is assuming what he or she is trying to prove.
Science relies on observations, people, and the conclusions those people come to in regard to the observations. Observation relies heavily on our five senses, but evolutionists have no logical reason to trust our five senses or believe that the world will function as it has in the past. Furthermore, in order to come to a conclusion from an observation a person must use logic. Outside of the Bible, there is no reasonable foundation for logic, and therefore science is not logical under the evolutionary worldview. Science makes sense as Christians because doing science is a way of fulfilling God’s command to Adam to take dominion over His creation.
Never forget that scientists are people, and people make mistakes. We make mistakes, other people make mistakes that cause trouble for us, we don’t know everything, and some things are beyond our reach, strength, and understanding. We are not perfect. However, there is One Who never makes mistakes, is perfect, and loves you so much He died for you. In this world that is so full of things like fear, hate, war, turmoil, pain, uncertainty, separation, and death, the only thing we can truly rely upon is God and His infallible Word.
Posted on April 20, 2013
Dinosaur Detection, Part II
In our clue last week, we discussed Theropods (dinosaurs like T-rex and velociraptor), which evolutionists believe evolved into birds. However, the ichnofossils do not support this idea, as velociraptor and bird footprints have been found right next to each other in Cretaceous layers in Wyoming. These footprints had layers above them, so they could not have been contaminated by modern bioturbation, meaning the disturbance of modern creatures in older layers. The idea of turning scales into the intricate feathers birds need to fly would also be an enormous obstacle in dinosaur to bird evolution.
God created dinosaurs, originally all vegetarian, just about six thousand years ago. Since dinosaurs, by definition, are land animals (sorry, pterodactyl and plesiosaurus are not technically dinosaurs), they were created on day five of creation week, the very same day that God created Adam and Eve. We have many ancient legends and depictions of dragons from all over the world, like the Beowulf, Asian art, and the Ica stones from Peru, all of which seem very similar to dinosaurs. The word dinosaur was not invented until 1841 by Sir Richard Owen, who was a creationist, so it is very likely that “dragon” was the ancient word for dinosaur. As I have discussed previously, Mary Schwietzer found soft-tissue in dinosaur bones and Hugh Miller C-14 dated a collection of dinosaur bones getting “dates” of around 40 thousand years, showing the dinosaur are not really millions of years old.
No discussion on ichnofossils in vertebrate paleontology could be complete without mentioning the most important site for footprints of this type: Glen Rose, Texas. The Paluxy River bed in Glen Rose has had the largest excavation of footprints in the nation, including footprints of and Acrocanthosaurus (a type of theropod), a Sauropod, and, most controversial, human footprints. The Taylor Trail, which was excavated in 1969 by Stan Taylor, consists of a trail of theropod footprints (usually attributed to Acrocanthosaurus) crossed at an angle by a trail of 14 human footprints, all appearing in the normal left-right pattern we would expect.
The Alvis Delk print was discovered in the Paluxy River in 2000, showing the footprint of a theropod stepping into the edge of an easily identified human footprint. X-ray scans were used to check the validity of the Alvis Delk print, checking where the changes in density occurred in the rock. When a human and/or dinosaur steps on a section of mud, the mud directly below the weight bearing areas of the feet compress more than the mud in the surrounding area, leaving the mark of the footprint in the density of the rock as well as in the impression on top of it. The change in density in the x-ray scans on the Alvis Delk print lined up exactly with where they should be if the print was genuine. Also, the print was covered in another layer of sediment, ensuring its validity. Next week we will conclude our mystery case.
Posted on April 13, 2013
Dinosaur Detection, Part I
Today we continue on our quest to solve this mysterious case, of which we are the judge. So far, we have talked about ichnofossils (trace fossils) and the hints they give us about our case, Wold-Wide-Flood v. Evolution & Billions of Years. As I mentioned last week, the study of ichnofossils is primarily a focus of invertebrate paleontology, but it can also be applied to vertebrate paleontology, by studying the footprints of vertebrate animals like dinosaurs.
In order to talk about dinosaur footprints, it is necessary to get a basic understanding of how dinosaurs are classified. Yes, we all know the dinosaur like T-rex and triceratops, but in dinosaur footprints, sometimes all we can tell is which of the three basic types of dinosaur the footprint belongs to. Sauropods, the four-legged, long-necked dinosaurs like Apotosaurus, are one of the three types. Some sauropods were the largest animal to ever walk on earth. Brontosaurus was considered a sauropod, until some scientists realized that it had the wrong head on it, and was actually and Apotosaurus. Ornithischians were one of the most diverse groups of dinosaurs. Two of my top three favorite dinosaurs fall into this group, triceratops and stegosaurus. The final group, Theropods, includes the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex.
Before we can explore dinosaur footprints, and what they indicate about the Biblical flood and billions of years/evolution, understanding theropods is vital. Evolutionists believe that theropods, like T-rex and velociraptor evolved into the birds that we have today. They use fossils like Archeopteryx as their “evidence” of a transitional form from dinosaur to birds. However, all evidence is interpreted based off of our starting ideas, and the thinking process of coming to conclusions. For example, in the case of Archeopteryx, the teeth do not necessarily indicate that it is a dinosaur because modern day hummingbirds have teeth too. Archeopteryx was probably an extinct type of bird. There is a lot more I could go into about Archeopteryx, but feather impressions are not ichnofossils (since they don’t directly indicate the animal’s behavioral habits), so that discussion is for a later date. Next week, in Part II of this clue, we will go over why ichnofossils are against dinosaurs to birds evolution.
Posted on April 5, 2013
Investigating Ichnofossils
After a brief break for Easter, we are back to investigating the very important clues in the case of World-Wide Flood vs. Evolution & Billions-of-Years, a case in which you are the judge. We briefly discussed ichnofossils over the past few weeks, but I’d like to dive further into this deep sea of clues. Although most ichnofossils, such as dinosaur footprints, are exposed after water erodes away the layers above, some are found with the layers still together. In such cases, you can actually have two copies of the same ichnofossil on both layers of rock. The one preserved on the upper layer is said to have epichinial preservation, while the one on the lower layer is said to have hypichinial preservation.
In our last clue about ichnofossils, I mentioned that ichnofossils are mostly about a creature’s behavior, and that it is often difficult to distinguish what animal made the trace fossils. However, mortichinina traces are exceptions, because by definition, it is both about the creature’s death and it always has a body fossil at the end of the trail, making their sources always identifiable. In a way, just about all trace fossils are mortichinia or fugichinia (escape) traces under the creationist interpretation, because they are all traces of creatures that were trying to escape God’s judgment during the flood, but failed.
Most iconologists study invertebrate paleontology, and are more interested in studying things like fossilized sea-cucumber burrows rather than dinosaur footprints. This is because invertebrate body fossils are not as common as vertebrate body fossils, for invertebrates are soft-bodied creatures that don’t fossilize easily. They use trace fossils to fill in a few gaps in their understanding of invertebrates, because they believe that understanding fossil invertebrates is important to understanding evolution. They are assuming that all life formed from lifeless chemicals and that the universe is billions of years old before they even look at the ichnofossils. However, don’t be fooled by this. The presence of any invertebrate fossils in the fossil record, like jellyfish fossils, is not something evolutionists like Charles Darwin expected. Jellyfish fossils don’t make sense according to evolution/billions of years, but they make perfect sense in light of the Biblical flood, being buried rapidly in underwater mudslides. Next week we will discuss dinosaur footprints.
Posted on March 30, 2013
Choice in a Garden
It was a beautiful day in the garden; the sun filtered light through the canopy of bright green leaves above, the birds were singing, and Adam was taking a ride on the stegosaurus with his beloved companion, Eve. It was another perfect day in Eden, or at least, so it began. Little did Adam or Eve know how dramatically their life and future prospects would change that day.
This was the day that Adam and Eve decided to trust the words of someone else over God’s Holy Word. They let themselves doubt God’s Word, as the serpent asked them, “Hath God indeed said . . . ” Because of their choice, all of mankind now suffers the consequences of hard work, suffering, pain, separation, and death. Sin is a terrible thing; it brought corruption to God’s perfect creation. God did not create suffering and death, rather He created everything good, and corruption came into the world because of our choice to disobey God.
However, even though the first Adam chose to doubt God’s Word and disobey Him in the Garden of Eden, the Last Adam, Jesus, chose to obey God in the Garden of Gethsemane about four thousand years later. Because of the choice that the Last Adam made to obey God, we have the option to accept redemption from the Creator Who stooped to help us.
We have two options. The first option is that we can follow in the footsteps of the first Adam, doubt God’s Word, and suffer the consequences of eternal pain and torment. The second option is that we can follow in th footsteps of the Last Adam, put God’s Word in primary authority over our lives, learn to love Him, and have the glorious restoration of that first perfect world that God created and live with Him eternally where there will be no more tears or death. The choice of the first Adam vs. the choice of the Last Adam, both made in a garden one day, is one of the links between creation and Easter.
Posted on March 23, 2013
Tricky, “Ich”-y Clues
Ichnofossil is a rather funny looking word, and frankly, it’s fun to say too – it is pronounced Ick-no-fossil. Like I mentioned last week, these fossils are unique because they are not body fossils (i.e., bones, preserved skin, etc.), but merely traces. They are evidence that something was moving around in and on top of the rock layers while the rock layers were still soft and just forming. This indicates that the layers were deposited rapidly by Noah’s flood, not millions of years ago.
There are three basic things scientists can get clues about from fossils: 1) how the animals lived, 2) how they died, and 3) how they were buried. Ichnology (pronounced “Ick-nol-ogy” the study of ichnofossils) is primarily concerned with how animals lived. In the very strict and technical definition of ichnofossil, an ichnofossil must be associated with an animal’s behavior. For instance, the traces of a trilobite being dragged through a flood current are technically not ichnofossils, because they do not indicate anything about the animal’s behavior, while the traces of the same trilobite pausing along its trail are ichnofossils, because they are an indication of the trilobite’s behavior. Personally, I think that studying how the trilobite was being dragged along by flood currents would be much more fascinating than the former example, but it’s not officially an ichnofossil.
Ichnology is a rather tricky, detective-like science, because we don’t know what animal made many of the specific ichnofossil classifications. Ichnofossils, just like animals, have a classification scheme including genera and species. However, because we don’t know what animals made the traces, we have to classify them based on similar appearance, rather than makers. An article published in a 2012 edition of The Open Paleontology Journal explored the research of scientists trying to connect the burrowing habits of a particular sea cucumber to various types of fossilized burrows. Although they were not exactly able to target a specific type of ichnofossil caused by this sea cucumber’s burrowing, ichnologists have had success in identifying trilobite tracks.
Posted on March 16, 2013
Clues From the Past
In general, when people think of fossils, they think of bones – especially dinosaur bones. But, fossils are not just bones, but also soft body parts and trace fossils too. Trace fossils are called ichnofossils. The most obvious type of trace fossils are footprints of vertebrate animals like dinosaurs, but there are also many other kinds of trace fossils, like burrows, trilobite tracks, fossil nests, and even fossilized dung.
Ichnofossils have to be preserved very rapidly because most are impressions of some kind, often made by very small creatures like crickets. This is an important evidence for the world wide flood. We find a lot of tracks and burrows in flood layers because animals and people were trying to get away from the flood, either through running or hiding. Also, most ichnofossils are preserved when impressions are made in fine-grained sand, and then rapidly buried in a different type of sediment (usually coarse grained).
Ichnofossils are more than just marks in the rock – they are clues from the past about how those layers were laid down, who was on top of them, and when they were made. But, clues don’t really speak for themselves, rather, you have to have a detective investigating the clues and coming to logical conclusions about what happened based on those clues and whatever information you had beforehand. Just like I mentioned last week, you are the judge, you have to come to a conclusion on your own that you are responsible for, and ichnofossils are some of your clues. We will look into ichnofossils in greater depth over the next few weeks in this Clue Series.
