Creation Moments on Oneplace.com

Secular archaeologists usually assume that the historical statements found in Scripture are overstatements or simply incorrect. It was with this attitude that archaeologists approached the ruins of Hazor to see if they could tell whether Solomon actually did add to the wall of Hazor and build other structures there, as the Bible says. Hazor was an important city on the primary military and trade routes between Israel and Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt.Hazor had been destroyed by Joshua when Israel took possession of the Promised Land. Over the following centuries the site began to be inhabited by Israelites. By Solomon's time, the city reached a size of about 10 acres and was home to between 800 and 1,000 people. Archaeologists found that sometime during the reign of Solomon, the city wall was expanded, doubling the size. Other buildings also were added at this time. Excavations show that at Solomon's time the city was prosperous. The city's six-chambered gate is typical of the gates Israel built at this time. Gates of the same design also exist at Megiddo and Gezer, two other cities named as being fortified by Solomon, according to the same verse that mentions the fortification of Hazor!Again, the Bible has been vindicated as presenting accurate history. We can be equally sure that the Bible's account of creation is accurate because the Bible is God's Word.1 Kings 9:15“And this is the reason for the levy which king Solomon raised: for to build the house of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.”Prayer: Dear Father, I thank You that Your Word is trustworthy in all things, for it tells me of my salvation in Jesus Christ. Amen.Ref: Biblical Archaeology Review, "Solomon's City Rises from the Ashes." Image: Tel-Hazor-1821, Bukvoed, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

The hooded pitohuis is an evil-smelling, blue jay-sized bird that is native to New Guinea. The bird has been known to science since 1827, but it held a secret that only began to be uncovered in 1989.An American graduate student made the discovery while studying another local bird, the bird of paradise. Unfortunately, hooded pitohuis kept getting caught in his nets. As he released the unwanted pitohuis, they would claw and peck at him. After he released the birds, he licked the wounds they had caused. As a result, his mouth began to burn and finally became numb for several hours. This led the graduate student to send dead hooded pitohuis to the National Institutes of Health for further study. The poison the birds produce was finally identified as one of the most poisonous substances known. It is hundreds of times more poisonous than strychnine. The amount of poison in one bird can kill 500 mice. Most amazing is that only one other creature produces the same poison, the poison dart frog of Central America.Those who believe in evolution maintain that the ability to produce the poison must have evolved twice. But it's not that simple. Not only do both bird and frog, half a world apart, have to evolved this unlikely ability twice, but they both had to evolve immunity to their own poison. Ultimately, evolution is a faith. It is a faith that is poisonous to Christianity because it makes death natural rather than a result of the first Adam's sin. And without the fact of the first Adam, there is no need for the Second Adam, Jesus Christ.Acts 14:2“But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected against the brethren.”Prayer: Lord, I thank You for Your victory over sin, death and the devil. Amen.Ref: Natural History. Image: Hooded Pitohui 4 Benjamin Freeman, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

One of the common methods of finding the age of rocks, and ultimately the age of the earth, measures the decay of radioactive uranium into lead - the more lead, the older the rock. The method, however, makes some very big assumptions. First, scientists assume there was no lead in the rock when it first formed, but this is unprovable. Then, they assume that rocks are like locked vaults and that no uranium, lead, or the in-between decay elements can ever enter or leave the rock.The fact is, numerous scientific studies show all these assumptions to be wrong. Studies have shown that commonly dated rock material can have lead in it as it crystallizes. Other studies have shown that lead, uranium and the other elements important for dating can be removed from the rock by simple weathering or other conditions. In other words, while evolutionary scientists compare rocks to locked vaults, we are learning they are more like sponges. This explains why evolutionary dating methods have found, for example, one part of a rock to be 30 times older than another part of the same rock.The next time you hear someone say that certain rocks or the fossils in them are millions or billions of years old, just remember, rocks are not like vaults. They are more like sponges that gain or lose elements, making accurate dating impossible. There is no good scientific evidence that the earth is any older than the few thousand years indicated by the Bible.1 Corinthians 2:7“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory…”Prayer: I thank You, Lord, that I can trust You as the Rock of Ages. Amen.Ref: Impact #319 [ICR]. Image: Uranium (Element - 92) 3 James St. John, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

Whales pose some interesting problems for those who believe that all living things slowly evolved to their present forms over millions of years. According to evolution, sea creatures gradually adapted to life on land because they could make a better living there. That's where mammals supposedly evolved. Then, for some unknown reason, some of those mammals - Darwin said it was the bear - decided to return to the sea. This required the mammal ancestor of the whale to lose its legs, readapt to locomotion in water, develop new vision abilities, and move its breathing nostrils to behind its brain.As unlikely as all of this sounds, some evolutionists make one more amazing claim. They claim that some whales still have the vestigial bones of their pelvises or legs embedded in their bodies. Some have even claimed that certain whales have been seen that still had vestigial legs growing out of their bodies. (No trace of these so- called "legs" can be found in any scientific literature.) The small bone that some whales have is not a vestigial pelvis. It is not even attached to the backbone or any part of the skeleton but is situated within the body as an anchor for some of the whale's organs. In short, any talk of whales with legs or vestigial walking structures is pure myth.God created the whales, just as the Bible says. The great whales glorify God with their great majesty and power.Psalm 148:7“Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps.”Prayer: With the whales, dear Father, I glorify You for Your work of creation and for my salvation in Jesus Christ. Amen.Ref: Creation, "The strange tale of the leg on the whale" To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

A strange and beautiful family of creatures known as ammonoids nicely illustrate the illogic and lack of scientific reasoning used by defenders of evolution. While the chambered nautilus is the only species of ammonoid that exists today, the fossil record reveals hundreds of extinct species. Some, like the chambered nautilus, had relatively simple shells, while others had intricately detailed shells with ruffled, wavy walls.Historically, evolutionists have always explained this variation by saying that, like all other living things, ammonoids evolved from simple to complex. An ammonoid specialist developed a system that mathematically rates shell complexity, based on factors like the length and number of loops and spirals in the shell. He concluded that even though the relatively simple chambered nautilus survives, those with more complex shapes had a survival advantage in the past. He argues that the ammonoids evolved from complex to simple, thus proving evolution.Simple to complex? Complex to simple? Both arguments cannot be used in science to support evolution. The fact that supporters of evolution illogically argue in both directions shows that evolution is not scientific. It is merely a philosophy that seeks to explain the creation without need for the Creator. But ultimately, evolution is unable to explain the creation without our Creator.Proverbs 12:5“The thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.”Prayer: Lord, deliver us from the deceitfulness of unbelievers. Amen.Ref: Toronto Star, "Survival of the simplest." To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

When you are a small animal whose diet could injure or even kill you, eating can be positively dangerous. That danger increases if you belong to a family of animals that normally takes minutes or even hours to swallow a victim.An adult Texas thread snake is only about six or eight inches long, a little thicker than a strand of spaghetti and has a jaw unlike any other creature. It eats ants - ants that could seriously injure or kill it. As you may know, snakes generally take several minutes or even hours to swallow their food as they slowly stretch their jaws around their prey. But this method wouldn't work for the thread snake. By the time it was swallowed, the snake’s lunch would have killed the snake. So, the thread snake has a lower jaw, filled with teeth, and a hinge in the middle. As the lower jaws hinge in and out - several times a second, like a swinging door - ants disappear into the snake in the blink of an eye. Thus, they are able to down dozens of ants a minute!The Texas thread snake is more than a witness to God's wise design. Its unique jaw structure is essential to its survival. If evolution is true, the Texas thread snake would have become extinct during the millions of years it waited for evolution to find a solution to its problem. In addition, since there is no other vertebrate with a jaw like the Texas thread snake, from what could it have evolved? Unlike the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the thread snake truly bears witness to God's greatness.Psalm 145:15“The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season.”Prayer: I thank You, dear Father that You have provided for the needs of all Your creatures in a way that witnesses to You. Amen.Ref: Science News, "Weird jaws let tiny snake gulp fast." Image: Rena dulcis on hand Victor Engel, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

How do you make something that is sweet? For that matter, how do you make any taste? I'm not talking about adding sugar to a recipe. Let's say that God provided you with all the atoms of the various elements you needed to make a molecule that tastes sweet. If you were to make such a molecule, you would need to know the construction of the sweet taste receptors on your tongue.You would need to know which molecular shapes would bind to those receptors. Then you would have to understand how all the different elements bind to one another and what molecular shapes they would have.The complexity of this task was well illustrated when researchers at the University of Wisconsin- Madison released a computer model of a protein called brazein. Brazein is 2,000 times sweeter than sugar and found naturally in a West African fruit. Brazein's coiled molecular shape is responsible for its sweetness but if the molecule uncoils, it loses all its sweetness. Its structure closely resembles scorpion poisons and proteins used by some plants for self-defense. The more we learn about how things work in the world around us, the clearer it becomes that everything that exists has been carefully designed to interact in very specific ways. We learn more about this Creator, though, not from molecules, but from His holy Word.Psalm 119:103“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”Prayer: Dear Father, grant me understanding as I study Your Word. Amen.Ref: Science News, "Protein's shape may give extra-sugary taste" To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

One of the most difficult problems for those who believe that we are the product of millions of years of evolution is the human brain. The human brain has ten billion times 25,000 neural connections. If you work it out, this means that a miracle would have to take place if we evolved from an ape-like creature on the time scale that evolutionists propose: every generation would have had to have many thousands more neural connections than the last!Even more astonishing is the fact that we are not born with a brain that is a blank slate. Several studies have shown that even infants as young as three months expect things to behave in certain ways. In one study, three-month- old infants showed surprise when researchers made an object they were looking at disappear. Another study showed that young infants expect inanimate things not to move by themselves. But they expect living things to move all by themselves. Such built-in "programming" in the brain enables us to progress more quickly as we learn about the world around us.The problem of the complexity of the human brain, and the fact that it seems to come preprogrammed, ultimately caused Alfred Russel Wallace, an influential evolutionist, to switch to belief in a Creator. The more we learn about what God has created, the more likely we are to conclude that we are indeed the work of a wise Creator. He has even given us a brain capable of seeing that.Acts 17:29“Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”Prayer: I thank You, dear Father, for the intelligence You have given me. Amen.Ref: Natural History, "The Nature of Learning." To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

Bats defy evolutionary explanations. For their echolocation systems to evolve, bats had to develop simultaneously the ability to make high-pitched sounds, hear those sounds, and figure out what they mean. How did they eat before they evolved these abilities? Then there is the problem of evolving typical mammalian forearms into bat wings without crippling the creature in the process. Even evolutionists admit that the evolution of all these features even once is highly unlikely.Bats are divided into two sub-orders. Smaller bats, like the free-tail bats of Mexico, are classified in the sub-order of Microchiroptera. Large bats like the fruit bat are classified into the sub-order of Megachiroptera. The brains of the larger bats have very different visual pathways than those in smaller bats. The visual pathways of the larger bats are more like those of primates! But no evolutionist would dare suggest that they evolved from primates. The second complication is that this means that both small and large bats could not have evolved from a common ancestor. It further means that all the unlikely features of bats had to have evolved at least twice, if evolution were true.The Bible offers a simple explanation for the design of the bat and the differences between their brains. They were made by God using whatever designs He knew would be best for that creature's way of life, without regard for later classification systems.Psalm 33:6“By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.”Prayer: Lord, thank You for Your Word that made life and gives life now. Amen.Ref: Creation, "Bats: Sophistication in Miniature" To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

The fish known as the loose jaw or dragon fish has been found to have some remarkable abilities. At most 10 inches long, this deep-sea fish lives at depths between 1,500 and 4,500 feet. At these depths, the only light that gets through the water is a dim blue light. As a result, sighted creatures that live at those depths can see well in dim blue light, but virtually none of them can see light in the red end of the spectrum. None, that is, but the dragon fish, and that's its secret weapon.The dragon fish is the only known creature to have chlorophyll in its eyes. This compound gives the dragon fish the ability to see red light in the depths. But why would the dragon fish have these abilities if there is no red light to see? He makes his own red light. This bioluminescent red light is invisible to the dragon fish's prey. But the dragon fish can see its red light reflecting off nearby prey, as a sniper who uses an infrared scope to sight his prey in the dark.The dragon fish offers a powerful set of arguments in favor of a Creator. Its unique ability to see red where there is no red light cannot be explained by natural selection. Before it supposedly evolved the ability to see red light, how would it know about red light? And why would it have evolved the ability to create a color of light it could not have known about? The dragon fish's sniper-like ability to find its prey with light invisible to its prey bears powerful witness to a wise and powerful Designer.Genesis 1:20"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”Prayer: Dear Father, I praise You for the wonders You have made. Amen.Ref: S. Milus, “Red-flashing fish have chlorophyll eyes,” Science News. Image: Stomiidae deep-sea fish varieties poster, rawpixel, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111