Mark 16:15-20:

15  And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16  He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

17  And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18  They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

19  So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

20  And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

This is the great commission.  This is not just a job for the preachers, but this is the job of all who confess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The message of the Gospel is either-or; not gradients of options; not a wide or vast range of variations.  Jesus Christ is the Truth of God’s word, and Truth knows no opinion.  Truth has zero tolerance.  Truth stands alone.  Jesus said in John 14:6:

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Two plus two equals four.  Three-point-nine just won’t do.  That is the nature of Truth.  Jesus clearly lays out two options: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”  Have you believed and been baptized?  Have you found the peace that passes understanding?  Have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory?  Do it today, for today is your day of salvation.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for simple instructions for immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:11-12:

11  And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

GOD SAID, Psalms 104:14:

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

MAN SAID:  According to evolutionist Richard Dawkins, “...Now, in the 21^st century as we approach Darwin’s bicentenary, the fact that half of Americans take Genesis literally is nothing less than educational scandal.”

Now THE RECORD.  The educational scandal, Mr. Dawkins, is the idiocy that there was a big bang from virtually nothing and, “poof,” here we are.  Ignored and disdained by the evolutionists is the fact that there are literally thousands of scientists who believe in God.  Arguably the most educated people in the world, America’s medical doctors, believe in God, prayer, and miracles.  The following excerpts are from the 2005 God Said Man Said feature titled “Evolution Continues to Collapse...Now What?:”

It’s not just the general “uneducated” population having problems with evolution.  The following passage is from Lee Strobel’s book, The Case For A Creator:

There were one hundred of them—biologists, chemists, zoologists, physicists, anthropologists, molecular and cell biologists, bioengineers, organic chemists, geologists, astrophysicists, and other scientists.  Their doctorates came from such prestigious universities as Cambridge, Stanford, Cornell, Yale, Rutgers, Chicago, Princeton, Purdue, Duke, Michigan, Syracuse, Temple, and Berkeley.

They included professors from Yale Graduate School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tulane, Rice, Emory, George Mason, Lehigh, and the Universities of California, Washington, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Georgia, New Mexico, Utah, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

And they wanted the world to know one thing: they are skeptical.

After spokespersons for the Public Broadcasting System’s seven‑part television series Evolution asserted that “all known scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution” as does “virtually every reputable scientist in the world,” these professors, laboratory researchers, and other scientists published a two‑page advertisement in a national magazine under the banner: “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.”

Their statement was direct and defiant.  “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life,” they said.  “Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

They were not narrow‑minded fundamentalists or rabid religious fanatics—just respected, world‑class scientists like Nobel nominee Henry F. Schaefer, the third most‑cited chemist in the world; James Tour of Rice University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; and Fred Figworth, professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale Graduate School.

Together, despite the specter of professional persecution, they broached the politically incorrect opinion that the emperor of evolution has no clothes.  [End of quote]

The advertisement referred to above was published in The Weekly Standard, October 1, 2001.

Arguably, the world’s most educated people populate the field of medicine, and supporters of evolution they are not.  An article published by Business Wire, December 20, 2004 was a review of a national survey of 1,100 physicians.

· 74% of doctors believe that miracles have occurred.

· 73% believe they can occur today.

· 72% of American physicians believe religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life.

· 58% attend worship services at least one time per month.

· 67% believe the Bible was inspired by God.

· 55% of doctors said they have seen treatment results in their patients that they would consider miraculous.

· 51% pray for their patients as a group.

· 59% pray for individual patients.

· 67% of America’s physicians encourage their patients to pray.

This survey was conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute of New York City.  [End of quotes]

Light is the life source.  I John 1:5:

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

God is light.  Every ray of light that rains down upon the earth has been ordained by the God of light.  This life travels at 186,282 miles per second.  This light, that we take for granted, is much more sophisticated and all-encompassing than we can ever know.  But, the things that we are discovering about it are marvelous in themselves.

The following paragraphs are from the God Said Man Said feature titled “Language of Light:”

A photon is radiant energy—a unit of light intensity.  Sixty-five to 100 trillion cells in your body communicate by emitting light—truly an internal life light.

Dr. Fritz‑Albert Popp, a physicist from Munich, Germany, specializes in the study of biophotons, which are made up of electromagnetic waves.  His laboratory is the largest of its kind in the world.  The author Sanford Frumker in his book, Test and Grow Healthy, comments concerning Popp’s studies:

Photons are packages of energy, and bio means life.  So biophotons are packages of the energy that carry the information of life.

Biophotons are made up of electromagnetic waves with a frequency range of 10 (to the fourteenth power) to 10 (to the sixteenth power) Hz (Hz = cycles per second) and they carry the information of life.  All living things absorb photons of these frequencies.  All living things also produce photons of this frequency.  And when one cell of a living organism communicates with other cells, it does so by sending photons of this bioelectromagnetic frequency.

Popp further found that when any living organism died, the biophotons carrying bioelectromagnetic energy of 10 (to the fourteenth power) to 10 (to the sixteenth power) Hz immediately and completely left the body.  When that energy was gone, life ceased.

He also found that photons were “coherent radiation.”  This means that they radiated laser beams.  They could thus work between all single systems of cells at the highest speed possible—the speed of light.  What’s more, they had a higher “coherence,” or constituted a much more “refined technical system” than the lasers we can produce with our advanced technology.  While industrial lasers emit only limited wavelengths, the biological system emits an infinite number of wavelengths!  [End of quote]

Imagine, “coherent radiation:” light carrying the information of life—God’s information.

The interaction of this life-giving, information-laden light, with all that we know as life, is a marvel of God’s glorious handiwork.  We have surely just begun to scratch the surface of this knowledge. 

Photosynthesis is a name given to the process by which the earth’s green life captures the power of sunlight and converts it into the energy that all living creatures must have to live.  In the quarterly publication Answers, a magazine published by Answers In Genesis, we found the following discussion on the inter-working of the plant world.  Excerpts follow from the heading, “Little Green Machines:”

Inside the Plant Cell

Take any section of a leaf and put it under a microscope.  You’ll find an amazing collection of tiny factories and machines.  First you encounter little green egg‑shaped bodies, called chloroplasts.  Their job is to convert light to chemical energy to make sugar.  Each of these “eggs” is a complete factory in itself.  A single cell can have dozens of these factories.

As you magnify a chloroplast, you find the chlorophyll itself—a tiny, complex molecule made of many different atoms.  These atoms fall into just the right sequence and fold together in just the right order to respond to each incoming ray of light, the first step in the plant’s miraculous manufacturing process.

Photosynthesis—A Manufacturing Process Like None Other

Let’s take a brief look at the photosynthesis process.  Hundreds of chemical reactions take place in perfect sequence, like a production line in a well‑organized factory.

As chlorophyll panels absorb light, they vibrate feverishly, spewing out energized electrons.  Then conveyor belts and pumps, made out of proteins, compress the energized electrons into tiny “batteries.”

Next, small “carts” made out of molecules transport these batteries to the “carbon‑stitching machines” made out of enzymes and organic acids.  These machines use the power in the batteries to take carbon from the air (carbon dioxide, or CO2) and bind it into sugar and starch, the source of energy in the foods we eat.

The Nucleus—A Machine‑Making Machine

Chloroplasts could not function alone.  They need all sorts of other factories and machinery to support them.  At the center of each cell, for example, is a nucleus.  This serves as the administration and technology center of the cell.  Here all the information to run the cell is stored in the form of DNA.

Layers of membranes surround the nucleus.  Their job is to manufacture the parts that other machines need in the cell.  These layers don’t just make complex molecules out of proteins and sugars.  They break off and transport these molecules, like conveyer belts, to areas of the cell where they are needed.

As we travel around the cell, we discover brown, bean‑shaped bodies (mitochondria).  Each of these “beans” converts the sugar made in chloroplasts into another form of energy that the rest of the cell can use.

All these factories and machines are suspended in a jelly‑like fluid, called protoplasm.  This jelly is constantly rotating, and yet all the parts stay in communication with each other and know where to go.  The protoplasm and other cell parts remain close to the wall, pushed there by a large “waste bag” (the vacuole) that fills most of the cell.  This bag is filled with water and dissolved “trash” that is left over from the manufacturing.

Not all the “wastes” go into the “waste bag.”  Oxygen and water vapor, for instance, are released through the stomata into the atmosphere to be used by humans and animals.  If only manmade machinery produced “wastes” like this!  [End of quote]

The amazing hand of God.

The relatively new, or at least just recently being understood, concept of quantum theory is taking center stage in much of science.  You’ll hear it used in terms such as “quantum math,” “quantum physics,” “quantum computing,” etc.  Quantum is the new, hot buzz word.  Computer science sees it as the mechanism by which we will create the new supercomputers of the near future.  But now, the lowly blade of grass is discovered to have its own built-in quantum computing system which functions at a level beyond science’s dreams.  The following passages are from Science News, under the heading, “Quantum Capture:”

Quantum physics plays a larger role than scientists had expected in plants' capture of light.  New findings could explain life's uncannily efficient use of solar energy, researchers say.

In organisms ranging from blue algae to giant sequoias, complicated assemblies of molecules of the pigment chlorophyll absorb sunlight's photons and channel their energy to enable the plants to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars.

The efficiency of photosynthesis, as this process is called, has long astounded scientists.  Virtually every photon absorbed by chlorophyll initiates a photosynthetic reaction.  Plants use up to 90 percent of the light that strikes them, whereas commercial solar panels use less than 30 percent.

The absorption of a photon causes a chlorophyll molecule to enter an excited state, in which one or more of its electrons hop to a higher energy level.  The traditional view was that chlorophyll molecules within a complex, swap excitations until that energy finds its way to a reaction center, where it initiates a chemical reaction.  But at each exchange between molecules, the excitation might dissipate as waste heat, so scientists didn't understand how the process could be so efficient.

Instead of bouncing from one molecule to another, excitations move like waves do, reports a team of chemists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  In a new experiment, Greg Engel and his colleagues found that groups of chlorophyll molecules spend a surprisingly long time in a so‑called superposition of states—a quantum phenomenon in which many molecules share excitation energy and so are simultaneously excited and relaxed.  The mixtures of different states can show wavelike behavior.  For example, they can cancel each other or add up, like waves on a pond do.  [End of quote]

A blade of grass that was planted by its Creator grows and reproduces without the hand of man.  They cover the face of the earth.  This marvel of creation is up to 90% efficient (or probably 100%) in converting coherent sunlight into energy.  Man’s sophisticated solar technology can only capture 30%.  This blade of grass gives God’s creatures food to eat.  Grass has waste products (one of which is oxygen) that God’s creatures need to breathe.

Pseudo-science, in the form of the theory of evolution, tells us we’ve evolved from basically nothing without the hand of a Creator.  We are just an accident.  Of course, we understand that the plant kingdom also needs carbon dioxide, a waste product given off by all living creatures, in order to live.  Consequently, plant life and living creatures would have needed to evolve simultaneously.  Of course, this raises questions concerning other ingredients of life that would have needed to be functioning at the same time, such as:

· The earth’s soil filled with its wide range of living organisms

· Rain

· Streams and rivers

· Oceans

· Insects that pollinate

· Male and female

· Ozone

· DNA and the genome

· And so much more.

All these would have needed to evolve simultaneously.  Quite a feat for an accident.

Ernst Chain, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for his work with penicillin, is regarded as one of the major founders in the field of antibiotics.  Chain was a fellow of the Royal Society, holding numerous honorariums as well as being awarded the Pasteur Medal, the Paul Ehrlich Centenary Prize, the Berzelius Medal, and knighthood.  The following excerpt about Chain and his position on evolution is from the April 2008 issue of Acts & Facts:

A major reason why he rejected evolution was because he concluded that the postulate that biological development and survival of the fittest was "entirely a consequence of chance mutations" was a "hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts."

These classic evolutionary theories are a gross oversimplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they were swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.

Chain concluded that he "would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation" as Darwinism.  [End of quote]

A blade of grass and a ray of coherent light shouts for God.  The educational scandal, Mr. Dawkins, is that the foolish, bankrupt theory of evolution is has any traction whatsoever in a thinking society and in its halls of learning.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:11-12:

11  And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

GOD SAID, Psalms 104:14:

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

MAN SAID:  According to evolutionist Richard Dawkins, “...Now, in the 21^st century as we approach Darwin’s bicentenary, the fact that half of Americans take Genesis literally is nothing less than educational scandal.”

Now you have THE RECORD.

References:

Authorized King James Version

Bergman, J., Ph.D., “Ernst Chain: Antibiotics Pioneer,” Acts & Facts, 4/2008, p11

Castelvecchi, D., “Quantum Capture,” Science News, 4/14/2007, p229

Dawkins, R., “Mission Statement for Both Charities,” www.richarddawkinsfoundation.org, April 4, 2008

Frumker, S., Test and Grow Healthy, Dr. Sanford Frumker, 1731 Wrenford Rd., Cleveland, Oh. 44121

Sanders, R., S.S. Sheppard, “Little Green Machines,” Answers magazine, July-Sept. 2008, p40