One of my favorite things to do whenever I get a good excuse is to hop on Interstate 75 near my house (only four miles away) and head south.
It actually ALWAYS (100 percent of the time) makes my mind go back to childhood when we'd go on summer vacation to Miami, FL, driving down from my hometown of Loudonville, OH.
Just little me traveling amidst all those gorgeous gazillion semis (part of my childhood fondness) and seeing those foothills start to crop up does wonders for the soul.
The other week I had just such an occasion, needing to go to Hamilton (close to Cincinnati) with my mother to have her EGO leaf blower repaired under warranty at the only shop in the whole of southwestern Ohio that takes such work.
What was real funny is whilst I was radio station-hopping we heard for a very brief time (my mom told me to move on) a preacher giving a sermon with a real thick Kentucky accent, admonishing us, "God knows every HAR on yer head!", referring to Luke 12. He was kind of yelling and repeated this same phrase for effect.
Luke 12: [7] But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.
I just loved the way he said "HAR", making me think of how we used to mimic a friend of my brother's (born and raised as a young child in Kentucky), and say to each other as kids, "I've got a HAR in my EH-AR."
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Just the other day on Drudge Report was a highlighted story from the London Daily Express about how researchers have been given the "green light" for "huge hunt" to find proof Noah's Ark is real:
"The team from Noah's Ark Scans has now secured official government permits to launch the most sophisticated scientific investigation in history at the site near Mount Ararat. The high-tech expedition will employ non-destructive core drilling, subsurface imaging, and a specialized underground drone called 'Gopher' to map the subterranean anomalies.
"The team hopes the forthcoming search will provide the world with 'irrefutable proof' that the Bible's most famous vessel has been discovered, reports Daily Star.
"Supporters contend the formation precisely matches the dimensions of the Ark described in Genesis - 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high (approximately 515ft by 86ft).
"While skeptics maintain the structure is simply a unique natural rock formation, remarkable radar scans have previously revealed angular structures and large, hollow voids 20 feet beneath the surface."
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From an NPR station in northern Kentucky, talking about the Ark Encounter theme park in Williamstown, KY, about 37 miles from Cincinnati: "The ark stretches one and a half football fields long — the biggest freestanding timber-frame structure in the world. It holds three massive decks with wooden cages, food-storage urns, life-size animal models and other exhibits.
"It’s all designed to argue that the biblical story was literally true — that an ancient Noah really could have built such a sophisticated ship. That Noah and a handful of family members really could have sustained thousands of animals for months, floating above a global flood that drowned everyone else in the wicked world."
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As part of the Kentucky Ark theme park is their "Creation Museum." As one person writes online:
"This is where the Creation Museum truly carves out its unique niche. It doesn’t just present biblical stories; it attempts to reinterpret scientific data through a creationist lens. For example, when discussing geology, they propose 'flood geology,' arguing that the vast rock layers and fossil record we see today were primarily formed during the rapid, catastrophic processes of the global Noachian Flood, rather than over millions of years of gradual deposition. They challenge the uniformity of natural processes, suggesting that conditions during the Flood were vastly different, leading to rapid fossilization and sediment layering."
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Here is outtake from sermon by Richard Jordan and will have new article tomorrow:
“I think the people who do the creation science stuff have done such damage to the Body of Christ in diverting people’s ability to study the creation that it’s a tragedy.
"All you got to do is read Genesis 1:1 to not believe in evolution. You don’t need science to prove that; science is always anywhere from 500-3,000 years behind. You don’t need to prove God’s Word with science.
“Faith doesn’t come by hearing science. It comes by hearing the Word of God. Faith is a spiritual issue and all this stuff where you’re scared to death of the evolutionists well, ‘Boo!’ Christian people are the only people in the world who run when somebody says ‘Boo!’ Everybody else says, ‘Oooh. Here, I’ll buy a ticket to another one.’
“Paul says in Colossians, ‘By Him were all things were created.’ He didn’t write that to put the monkey on the run and chase the evolutionists out of the room. There are ministries all through evangelicalism . . . the home-school movement is where a lot of this stuff comes because people use the home-school movement to make themselves rich.
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“Before Jesus Christ stepped out and said, ‘Let there be,’ there was a plan the Father had. Ephesians 1 says He purposed in Himself. That purpose was a purpose of wisdom, understanding and knowledge. Those things are what were the basis of creation. So if you look at creation, what would you be looking for? Wisdom, understanding and knowledge.
“You ever wonder why in Genesis 1, the very first day when He created, God said, ‘And let there be light.’ Everything’s dark. Angels can’t see in the dark.
"He wanted them to be able to watch Him create what He created, because if you watch somebody create it, you know what you do? You say, ‘Wonder what He’s doing?’ And you begin to watch it form and you see He created it with a structure so it was obvious He had a plan.
“By the way, when people ask me, ‘Do you believe the creation evolved?’ I say, ‘Absolutely! Six days. Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six. It evolved into existence.’
“If you looked at the creation and He created it in a developing pattern, wouldn’t you think if you looked at it that it would look like it developed?
"I understand why people look at creation and think it evolved because it did in Genesis 1. The problem is they think, ‘Well, if we did it, it would take 750 billion years.’ God says, ‘Eh, no problem. I did that in a day.’ ”
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“Right now God is educating the principalities and powers in heavenly places (the angelic realm) about how He can pick disparate parts, different people, and make them function as one unit.
"When they look at the Body of Christ they see the answer, ‘Yes, He can do what He said He was going to do and make it all one!’
“He takes a Jew and a Gentile. He made them different. He put a middle wall of partition between them and said, ‘Never the twain shall meet’ and yet they do. Where? Paul says, ‘There’s no Jew, there’s no Gentile. We’re one in Christ.’
“If you’re one of the elect angels and you’re up there doing your job--you’re out mowing grass and tilling the farm or making Dr. Pepper and a little manna--you rub shoulders with lost people every day.
"Why would it surprise you that elect angels and fallen angels associate? You haven’t really thought about that, have you? It’s just as real as life here and the way life is lived here now, those are the terms Paul uses to describe life in the heavens.
“The earth in Scripture is designed by God—the reason He said ‘the heaven and the earth’ is because the earth was set out as the one planet in all the universe; that planet was designed by God in the original creation to be the place where His throne will dwell.
“It’s designed to be the command center of the universe. What’s the command center of your body? The brain.
"So the earth is going to function as the nerve center and Christ, dwelling on the earth, is the nerve center of the thing, with the heavenly places acting as the embodiment of His life; the manifestation of the life out of the head. We, as members of the Body of Christ, are the manifestation of the life that dwells in you.”
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In the ages to come the government in the heaven and the government in the earth function together as a unified organism under the direction of the head, Jesus Christ.
“The universe will be populated by the saints of the most high God and function together as a living organism manifesting the life that dwells in it--that’s what a body is.
"He’s going to put His life out through His creation. That’s why in passages like Romans 8 He calls the creation a ‘creature.’
“Everybody changes it to ‘creation,’ but that’s why Paul says ‘we are a new creature.’ Creation is designed not simply to be an inanimate object sitting there; it’s designed to be a place where the life of the Creator is manifest.
“Ephesians 3:9 says, ‘And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.' "