George was told that the fall colors this year were particularly beautiful near the nature center and so he went there and followed a trail leading from the picnic tables by the river.
He hadn’t thought that he had ever been there before, a place where parents would take young children, but then the fountain of his memory opened. He recalled that there should be a loop up ahead of this trail leading back to the center and sure enough there it was with the remembered rustic rail fencing and signs. He also remembered his father and uncle slowly walking behind him while his mother and aunt were waiting for them with sandwiches and pie.
As George returned to the nature center, having forgotten all about the foliage, a rush of regret and remorse led to repentance, something he should have expressed decades ago, for all of his idle words and rebellious deeds directed against his family. Leaving the center he felt a burden lift from his heart opening a future he had not imagined was even there before, but which had been waiting for him all this time.
Denise offers the prompt word “fountain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of the last two verses of Psalm 138.
Dale offers the prompt “here comes the rain” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. Although I feel “under the weather” (even though it’s not raining) I do have some photos from the past that might do.
The genetic evidence strongly suggests that Y Chromosome Adam/Noah and Mitochondrial Eve were not just real people, they were the progenitors of us all.
After the Fall, Adam named his wife Eve. (Genesis 3:20) Today geneticists talk about Y Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. The controversy is over estimates of how long ago they lived. If the estimates are over fifty thousand years ago, and you believed it, that would strongly show the Bible is wrong. If the estimates are under ten thousand years, and you believed it, that would confirm the biblical account.
The Bible also mentions a global flood with three couples, Noah’s sons and their wives (Genesis 6-8). This population bottleneck should appear in the genetic record as well and indeed one can find it. Nathaniel T. Jeanson and Ashley D. Holland in 2019 “confirm a 4,500-year history for human paternal ancestry”.
At about 25:00 in the video below John Sanford provided seven lines of genetic evidence supporting the idea of a literal Adam and Eve.
(1) Mitochondrial Eve (2) Y-Chromosome Adam (3) Population Bottleneck (4) Designed Variants in Genome (5) Babel Dispersion (6) Ape-to-Man Refuted (7) Genetic Entropy
Does that make you look at yourself differently? Do you still think that you are evolved stardust? None of us are.
Additional information on Adam and Eve and other science topics can be found at LogosRA.
I will include the Parashat Torah readings and Haftarah selections from the rest of the Bible in this set of readings since yesterday the reading of the Torah began again in Genesis. I will be using the Chabad.org calendar to find the name of the reading and the Jewish Virtual Library for the verses involved.
Weekly Bible Reading:Isaiah (Audio), Jeremiah (Audio) 26 Tishrei, 5782, Bereishit: ParashatGenesis 1:1-6:8; HaftaratIsaiah 42:5-43:11 Commentaries: David Pawson, Isaiah, Part 38, Jeremiah, Part 39, Unlocking the Bible Bible Project, Isaiah (40-66) and Jeremiah
The storm has passed. The sky is bright. A rainbow rises from the sea. It’s stopped by clouds eventually, but in the sky’s a sail that’s white. We’re thankful for this gift of light. Our gratitude pours out as praise that we were given all these days to listen, hear with renewed hearts, forsaking all deceptive arts, performing service that obeys.
Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “bright” to be use in an A rhyme of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge.
Robert looked at the nearly empty jar of oil wondering how to handle the rest of his afternoon. He could read, but even though the words made dictionary sense, together they conveyed no ideas to him. Earlier in the day his retreating fever allowed him to reply to some emails sent by those concerned about his heath. He kept messing things up with his typing making mistakes he would not have made before this cold.
He could sleep more and he might try that if those feverish dreams would stop telling him weird tales of spinning spirals absorbing the cosmos and begging him to help.
Robert realized he should take death seriously since this could be it and indeed, if it were it, he knew he wouldn’t be ready, because there was no way in his present state he could get near enough oil for his lamp.
Denise offers the word “handle” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories. If the oil and the lamp seem puzzling rather than terrifying think of Matthew 25:1-12 about the wise and foolish virgins and the oil only some of them carried for their lamps.
The bottom line up front would be if I’m not listening to and obeying God’s word in my heart, validated through the Bible, but instead come up with my own ideas of what is good, I will need to repent of many if not all of those supposedly good deeds.
The road to hell is paved with the good intentions I follow where good is defined as what I find right in my own eyes. Eve, deceived by the serpent and with no objection from Adam, saw the forbidden fruit as “good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3). When they ate the fruit, they were doing what was right in their own eyes.
The 20th century Catholic philosopher, G.E.M. Anscombe seems to have been saying something like that in her classic paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, where she criticized moral philosophy from Kant onward. Her message, as I understand it, is there’s no moral law that a philosopher can come up with outside of that coming from a divine lawgiver.
When a philosopher tries to ground moral obligation on something other than God’s command the philosopher’s own good intentions become what is right in his eyes. Since he is the author of his particular moral system this makes him one of many self-righteous lawgivers. Walk down the path of that self-righteous moral philosophy and one walks down the road to hell either on this earth or hereafter. Injustice, addiction, and conflict are some of the results one can expect.
Over the past few centuries that Anscombe was critical of people had powerful means to implement what was right in their own eyes leading to autonomy from God. Such humanistic autonomy is best seen as rebelliousness. We live in a dark age regarding morality because we rationalize what we should do based on criteria like maximizing happiness or effective altruism rather than hearing God’s voice confirmed through the Bible. We don’t listen to God’s voice because we don’t believe there is a God to listen to, or if we do like Adam and Eve surely did, we think we know better.
So, how do we hear God’s soft voice and how do we distinguish it from the deceiver’s misdirection? That is the topic of the video series below.
Brian tried method after method to prove the Collatz conjecture true, but every proof he came up with was flawed. He even studied defective proofs others came up with to see if there might be something he could salvage from them, but once he understood their methods he realized they weren’t much smarter than he was.
When someone suggested that he try proving that the conjecture could not be proven he felt defeated realizing he had no idea how to even begin proving something like that.
The problem with the conjecture was that it was so easy to state, and so obviously true, that the path leading to a solution seemed right around the corner, but no one could turn that corner. He imagined if he ever could then fame would compensate for his diminished sense of self-worth. The real problem, and Brian sort of knew this, was that even if he did prove the conjecture true, or prove it false, or prove it could not be proven either true or false, he would still need some other method, perhaps a transcendental argument or some other way to grasp that hand he wasn’t sure was even there reaching out to him, to overcome his ever present sense of existential futility.
And notice the promises are given to only one kind of person. Do you know who that is? To him to overcomes. There are no promises in the New Testament to those who do not overcome.
Derek Prince, How To Face the Last Days Without Fear! (about 25:00)
A few years ago if someone told me the world was coming to an end, I would likely have been disappointed if I didn’t outright dismiss it. When I prayed the words, “Thy Kingdom come”, in the Lord’s Prayer I did not expect it to come right now.
Call it an awakening or a revival, but something happened over those last few years which changed all that. That change didn’t have to happen, but I am grateful that it did.
The one I’ve linked to below is a fifteen part radio broadcast. It seems close to the book I am reading. He identified the situation we face and mentioned the defensive resources we have as well as the offensive resources to do this battle.
The six defensive weapons are listed in Ephesians 6:13-17. They are being girt with the truth, wearing the breastplate of righteousness, having feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, taking the shield of faith, wearing the helmet of salvation and carrying the sword of the Spirit. The four offensive weapons are prayer, praise, preaching and personal testimony.
He gives us an example of a personal testimony in Part 15 at 9:45 right at the end of this series. He says, “Through the blood of Jesus I am redeemed out of the hand of Satan. Through the blood of Jesus all my sins are forgiven. The blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin. Through the blood of Jesus I am justified, made righteous, just-as-if-I’d never sinned. And through the blood of Jesus I am sanctified, made holy, set apart to God. I am no longer in Satan’s territory.”
It’s all through the blood of Jesus. And so I testify as well.
Weekly Bible Reading:Proverbs (Audio), Ecclesiastes (Audio) Commentaries: David Pawson, Proverbs, Part 34, Ecclesiastes, Part 35, Unlocking the Bible Bible Project, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 