Daily Devotional – March 31

Paleontology

Soft tissue found in dinosaur bones has been found in over a dozen documented examples. Laboratory studies indicate that soft tissue decays within about 1 YEAR, and it is known that even the most stable biological proteins would break down within 30,000 YEARS. So how do evolutionists explain soft tissue within fossilized bones - yet still hang on to their belief that these bones are over 65 million years old?

According to research results from evolutionist, Dr. Mary Schweitzer (the discoverer of the original soft tissue found in a T-rex fossil reported in a 2005 paper), iron from our blood can bond to tissue immediately after death and decrease the decay rate of biological tissue by orders of magnitude. Dr. Schweitzer used TOTALLY unrealistic conditions in her experiments.

Dr. Mark Armitage is a creationist who was fired from the University of California in 2013 after publishing the implications of his discovery of soft tissue in a Triceratops horn (found in the Hell Creek formation in Montana). He makes the following observations about Dr. Schweitzer’s latest paper, “There is no way the iron could have preserved the tissues (blood vessels) which Schweitzer is talking about because blood clots within 20 minutes [locking up any available iron]…iron could not have preserved the soft BONE sheets I found because they are in impermeable bone and they never come in contact with the blood. PLUS Schweitzer used an ANTICOAGULANT in her experiment and separated all the other blood products in order to isolate and highly concentrate the iron. She also kept it sterile (i.e., no fungi, microbes, plants, water, ice) which is way different from [any natural conditions]...”

In other words, evolutionists start with the assumption that the huge time periods are true and then manipulate experiments to get the results they desire - even though such conditions or experiments in no way reflects reality. They then present the findings as proof that the huge time periods are true. This type of research is poor science. We need to do good science and go wherever the facts lead us. Soft tissue in dinosaurs is puzzling for evolutionists but not for Christians. Finding many examples of soft dinosaur tissue means they died in the recent past.

Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee;….

~ Job 40:15

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”

~ William Shakespeare (1564-1616), poet, playwright, actor

“the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come…”

~ Song of Solomon 2:11, 12

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 30

Geology

Earthquakes are movements of the earth; huge plates of rock can move sideways or slide vertically. Modern earthquake movements have seen land masses move the land as much as 30 feet, resulting in enormous damage. Compare this with the earthquakes during the Flood; many moved large chunks of the land 2 miles or more at a time! What havoc this would have caused!

When an earthquake happens underwater, a tsunami is formed. In an open ocean, a boat on the surface would experience a gentle movement upward. But once this tsunami reaches a shallow shoreline, the water builds up creating a wall of water. The tsunami that hit Japan, in March 2011, displaced the water below the ocean bottom about 30 feet - creating a 124 foot wave, which crashed onto the shore and killed some 15,000 people. Now imagine the tsunamis during the Flood with earth movements of 10,000 feet! The resulting tsunamis would pulverize EVERYTHING in its path and cover entire continents. Imagine a wall of water dwarfing the tallest building on earth! Earthquakes during the Flood would have been unstoppably destructive. The safest place to be during the Flood would have been on the Ark in the middle of the ocean. The Flood of the ancient world was truly a horrific event!

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;...The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations….

~ 2 Peter 2:5, 9

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 29

Geology

The Roberts family bought the famous Belle Tout lighthouse at Beachy Head, UK, in 1996 as a bed and breakfast. At that time, it was 300 feet from the high chalk cliffs. Four years later, the couple fled in the middle of the night as the cliff started to fall away leaving the lighthouse precariously perched just 10 feet from the edge. On average, six inches of the cliff erode away every year, keeping the white cliffs white by preventing shrubs, grasses, and trees from growing. Most people don’t realize that significant erosion is happening along coastlines. In recent history entire, English coastline villages have been lost into the ocean.

On the Outer Banks of North Carolina, USA, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was built in 1872 and sat about 1,800 feet from the shore. In just 130 years, the coastline had eroded 1,680 feet such that the light house sat only 120 feet from the sea. The lighthouse has since been moved. The amount of coastal erosion we observe does not match the evolutionary timeline, but it is consistent with the Bible’s timeline. About 4400 years ago, there was a global flood, and the continents’ coastlines have been eroding ever since. Coastal erosion is a worldwide problem, causing beaches to vanish and houses to toppling. Fast coastal erosion points to the world being young.

And the earth shall wax old like a garment,….

~ Isaiah 51:6b

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 28

Design

In November 1974, as a jumbo jet took off from the Nairobi airport, the plane shuddered violently, stalled, crashed to the ground and broke into pieces. The pilots had forgotten to deploy the slats on the leading edge of the wings that allow a plane to fly at much lower speeds without stalling. The development of this leading edge slat to help with landing and take offs has been a key factor in modern aviation. And guess what? Birds deploy such a wing slat on the front edge of their wings just as jumbo jets do! Large birds, like the steppe eagle, use this front slat (alula or bastard wing) to prevent them from stalling during landing. Such design did not happen by accident and chance, either in the jumbo jet or these large birds. Clearly, there is a Designer behind this “leading edge” technology.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles….

~ Isaiah 40:31

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 27

History

The dodo bird was a strange bird. These large, flightless birds lived on an island in the Indian Ocean. Sailors found this bird so easy to catch and eat that by 1662, it was extinct. No one seemed to notice. Decades later, scientists did not believe that the dodo ever existed. It was widely believed that legends of such a bird were pure myth. Just think about the evidence:

1. A strange creature
2. No one can find one in existence
3. Nothing but old accounts, fanciful drawings and vague descriptions

The dodo might still be considered a prehistoric animal or myth had it not been for a few dodo specimens found in the basements of museum collections. By the 19th century, scientists realized the dodo was a real bird that became extinct. There is a stuffed dodo bird on display in the Prague Museum of Natural History today.

In the same way, consider dragons:

1. A strange animal
2. No one can find one in existence
3. Nothing but old accounts, fanciful drawings and vague descriptions

But there is a significant difference between the dragon and dodo evidence. There are massive numbers of dragon accounts, drawings and descriptions from around the world. Many of these dragon descriptions fit a creature that we know by a different name – dinosaur. Dragons (dinosaurs) were considered real creatures for over 4000 years of human history. It was not until the 20th century that we began to teach that any firsthand human knowledge of dragons/dinosaurs was a myth. Dragons living after the Flood could have become extinct through environmental changes, man killing them off, or many other reasons.

Most dragon legends speak of dragons as viciously attacking and then being killed. In Scriptures (Revelation 12:3), Satan is portrayed as a vicious dragon. If dragons were a myth, then the description of Satan being a dragon would also be mythological. Satan wants people to deny his existence. This idea, that dragons are only a myth and not real, could be just another attack on God and His Word. Dragons were real creatures that went extinct - just like the dodo.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

~ Revelation 12:3

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 26

Biology

Lest you think everything to be discovered has already been discovered, a recent examination of whales has revealed a previously unknown organ – completely different from any other structure found throughout the animal kingdom. Researchers studying blue whale carcasses in Iceland used MRI scans to identify this unique fluid-filled sac (the size of a small cushion) within their chins. This new organ helps the blue whale coordinate its mouth movements during lunge feeding.

Blue whales are the largest creatures on the earth and feed by lunging through the water. At just the right moment, they open their mouths so wide that they screech to a halt like a drag-racer deploying a parachute. Before they come to a stop, they gulp enormous amounts of water filled with krill (shrimp-like creatures). Whales swallow the equivalent of their enormous body mass (400,000 pounds) of water with each gulp. For many years, scientists have wondered how they coordinate their jaw movement in order to capture and filter the krill so efficiently.

The newly discovered organ within their mouths has provided the answer. This organ contains millions of microscopic, finger-like nerve structures and blood vessels that change shape as the jaw moves. This enables the mouth to open extra wide at just the right moment. But here is the most amazing example of modern man’s intellectual blindness. Because the nerves from this newly discovered organ go through the jaw cavity to the whale’s brain, these researchers attribute the existence of this organ to “a tooth socket earlier in whale evolution”! In other words, they would rather believe that a toothache turned into a complex organ (with absolutely no evidence to support such wild speculation) than to acknowledge that the existence of the blue whale, with all of its intricate design, involved a Creator.

We all need to stand back and marvel at God’s detailed handiwork. O Lord God, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?

~ Deuteronomy 3:24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 25

Design

Today, there is great concern over football players receiving concussions. Have you thought about the woodpecker banging its head against a tree trunk? Why doesn’t a woodpecker get a concussion or brain damage? On average, he bangs his head 12,000 times a day, each time reaching speeds of 13-15 mph. As he pecks, his beak stops abruptly when it hits the wood. The deceleration force has been measured to be 1,200 times the acceleration of gravity (1200 g). Decelerating one’s heads at just 300 g would leave a person with serious brain injury or a concussion. Through slow motion footage, x-ray images, tomography, and CT scans, scientists discovered four features that enable the woodpecker to sustain this type of head-banging existence:

1. The beak is made of an elastic material.2. The woodpecker’s hyoid bone is different than a human’s. It loops around the entire skull, acting like a seat belt. In a human, this
2. bone sits just above the “Adam’s apple”.
3. The spongy bone behind the beak and at different places in the skull act as shock absorbers.
4. A special skull bone contains spinal fluid.

Researchers emphatically claim that all four of these features have to be present at the same time in order for the woodpecker not to destroy his brain. Evolution says that these four features would have come about by accident and chance over millions of years. If this is true, would we have woodpeckers? All four special design features needed to be present from the beginning in order for the impact force to be spread throughout the skull.

One last amazing fact - every time the woodpecker hits a tree, his eyes close simultaneously – otherwise his eyeballs would pop out of his skull! Of course, learning to close his eyes simultaneously with hitting his head against the tree also needed to work the first time, or we would have lots of blind woodpeckers. God is an amazing designer of woodpeckers!

For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.

~ Psalm 86:10

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 24

Geology

In a remote part of Utah lies Kodachrome Basin State Park. The National Geographic Society named this park because of its beauty. Some 60 towering stone spires jut up from the valley floor and are displayed against the backdrop of multi-colored sandstone layers. Evolutionists are at a loss to explain how these spires formed. When we put on our biblical glasses, we can view their formation from the Flood perspective.

During the Flood, many sedimentary layers were laid down. One of the layers would have been a squishy sand layer. Earthquakes could have caused this squishy sand mixture to be injected upward through the other sedimentary layers, like toothpaste being squished upward in its tube. This “plume” of sand then cemented together. At the end of the Flood, waters eroded the less cemented layers away, leaving the cemented plumes or sand pipes. Clusters of sand pipes can be found in other remote parts of the Colorado plateau. This same formation can be seen with mounds, like Ayers Rock in Australia. The sand plumes can be traced down to the source layer of sand. Secular geologists believe that the source bed was millions of years old prior to its injection. Would the source bed remain uncemented for millions of years? Hardly. These sedimentary sand pipes give evidence that there was little time between the layers being laid down, injected and eroded. The fact that sand pipes exist at all is evidence that little time passed from deposition to squeezing.

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

~ 2 Peter 2:5

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 23

Biology

Dolphins navigate and find their prey by using echolocation. A dolphin emits clicking calls and listens for their returning echoes. The greater time for the return of the echo, the further away an object. Echolocation is similar to sonar. So how is echolocation produced in a dolphin? The dolphin sends out ultrasonic clicks through its nasal canals. These vocalizations travel through a fatty protrusion on its forehead. This melon-like structure is actually a “sound-lens” designed to focus the sound waves into a beam that can be directed. This sound lens uses different fatty compounds to bend the ultrasonic sound waves in different ways. These specifically placed and designed fatty compounds have to be arranged in the right shape and sequence in order to focus the sound waves properly. These fatty compounds are different from normal blubber fats and are made by a complicated chemical process that requires a number of different enzymes.

Once the dolphin focuses and directs his ultrasound signal, the noise hits an object and bounces back to the dolphin. Sinuses filled with special oil located within the dolphin’s lower jaw receive the returning echo. The sonic information then passes to the inner ear which changes the sound waves to nerve impulses. These signals are then sent to the brain. This sonar system is so precise that it can detect a fish the size of a golf ball 230 feet away. The dolphin’s sonar system is the envy of the U.S. Navy. For such an organ to evolve by random mutations is hard to believe because it took years for inventors to develop the sonar used on ships. Consider just the sound-lens in the dolphin’s sonar system. It needed to have the right enzymes to make the right fatty compounds, and the lens had to be the right size and the right shape and be in the right location. A partially functioning system is no system at all. Ships and submarines have man-made sonar; dolphins have God-made sonar.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

~ Psalm 107:23,24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – March 22

Botany

Mangrove trees live alongside the ocean where their roots are flooded by salty ocean water. You would not expect ants, which build their home underground, to build nests in such a wet location. Believe it or not, some ants (Polyrhachis sokolova) thrive within Australia’s mangrove swamps. They build their cities deep into the mud some 18 inches below a mangrove tree. Twice a day, at high tide, their city is flooded!

The ants have designed their mound with two entrances that collapse at high tide - plugging the entrances and ensuring the safety of the ants inside. When seawater does leak into the underground tunnels, the ants scurry around moving their eggs and brood to different galleries. The bell-shaped galleries ensure that air is trapped, saving the ants from drowning. When the water recedes at low tide, the ants repair their city and others hunt small crustaceans on the mud flats. Two times a day…seven days a week…365 days a year, the ants repair their entrances and go hunting! Why would ants choose to live in such a way? It would be much easier to build their city in a place not covered with seawater twice a day. They did not choose it. God designed them to survive and thrive in this location.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

~ Proverbs 6:6-8

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.