By Jody Bennett
I don’t watch horror movies but I do find the concept of the 2019 horror flick Us very intriguing.
In the movie, a family encounters their evil doppelgängers and spends the entire film trying to escape their deadly grasp. These are not just lookalikes but their own evil incarnations.
The movie highlights the little-acknowledged fact that our greatest enemy and the most confronting thing we can encounter is our own worst selves. Continue reading
Author: Jody Bennett
Not always easy … but always worth it
By Jody Bennett
People might think that being a Christian is easy, a crutch that gets you through your traumas, a Father Christmas in the sky to pray to, a list of dos and don’ts that you do your best to follow but get forgiveness for when you fail.
However, as a Christian of several decades, I can tell you Christianity is not for cowards; being a Christian requires you to do some very, very hard stuff.
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The world’s oldest colour?
Peter’s Corner
The world’s oldest biological colour is pink. Bright neon pink. Or so the scientists announced in 2018, describing research done at the ANU in Canberra. They had extracted organic molecules called porphyrins from marine black shale rocks from Mauritania in Africa — shales that were well known as containing microbial fossil cyanobacteria. Porphyrins are ring molecules important for the colour of biological substances such as hemoglobin and chlorophyll. On this occasion the porphyrins had a purple colour, which becomes pink if diluted.
The scientists were awestruck thinking that these colour molecules could survive for such a long time. How long? 1,100,000,000 years. That is the alleged evolutionary age of the Precambrian strata in which the shales with the fossils, were positioned.
But that age is impossible for any organic substance. The laws of chemistry dictate that organic substances will gradually decompose — even in the fridge, that KFC chicken left over from the party last week is going to break down quite soon.
Under ideal conditions, some organics may last up to 20,000 years. That is way too short, at best 0.002% of the alleged age. The difference is like comparing an ant making an 11 metre walk to your letterbox, to the ant making a 600 km walk from Kalgoorlie to Perth! Impossible.
Question: Which is correct, the laws of chemistry, or the enormous age of the colour molecules? Answer: The law — it always wins, every time. The evolutionary age is very wrong, but a short Biblical age fits the evidence perfectly. Sorry to disappoint, but pink may not in fact be the oldest colour after all.
Again, time after time, the real credit goes to God, not man.
There are many examples of how creation makes very good scientific sense. I hope these words help you, as they have me, in your journey to surely trust the Creator. I gratefully acknowledge the below references for background information for this article.
Creation Magazine 41(1) 2019, p47.
Henriques-Gomes, L., Scientists discover world’s oldest colour – bright pink, theguardian.com, 9 July 2018.
Creation 41(2):9, 2019.
Peter Mikula is a mining engineer in Kalgoorlie who loves stargazing and talking with others about Jesus.
Why not tie the knot?
By Alan Bailey
Getting married is still fairly popular but not as popular as simply living together. We have husbands, wives and partners. And who should question it? After all, what people do in relationship is their business.
Well now, if the de facto position is defensible, why should it all be a taboo subject? Let’s take a quick look at two sides of the question.
Cheesecakes and creation
Peter’s Corner
I’ve been practising making my mother’s baked cheesecake recipe for a while, and I am told it is bearing good fruit.
Now think about this. The chef follows a recipe, or a process, or a code, that is designed to produce a perfect cheesecake. The ingredients do not become a cake just by themselves if we wait long enough. The right amount of time is part of the process – I discovered that when I forgot the cake was in the oven, but fortunately my wife Denise, instead of the fire brigade, came to the rescue.
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The cosmological constant
Peter’s Corner
I fitted another piece to an empty spot in my jigsaw puzzle, and marvelled at finding the only piece that perfectly fitted the shape and picture required for the empty spot. That reminded me how marvellously our universe is put together. It is like a jigsaw built not from cardboard pieces, but from physical and mathematical laws and numbers.
Did you know that scientists have discovered stunning coincidences between the values of some physical constants and the requirements for life? The numbers have amazingly exact values. This is called “fine tuning.” According to Michael Turner, famed astrophysicist, the fine-tuning of some of the constants is as unexpected as throwing a dart across the universe and hitting a precise one millimetre wide target.
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Believing six impossible things before breakfast
I had a discussion with someone the other day who liked Challenge News but disagreed with our stance
on creation. He felt that six days couldn’t be taken literally and that, in the light of textual criticism and evolutionary science, we should take those verses as instructive myth, rather than history. It got me thinking. Christianity is considered a religion of history, full of actual places names, dates and backed up by thousands of archaeological finds. So, if we discard the first bit of Genesis as not historic, at what point do we then agree that history begins?
Holiness
Holiness is not really a concept bandied about much in our culture today. If the term is used, it would most likely be negatively, as in “Stop being so holier-than-thou!” Meaning, “stop being so self-righteous”, or “stop judging me for my bad behaviour”.
‘Holiness’, as far as our culture understands it, is something we think we ought to avoid in order to make others feel better about themselves. Even exercising a free choice, like not drinking alcohol, not swearing or not sleeping with someone can be construed as some sort of super-spiritual behaviour depending on the company, and elicit an accusation of being too ‘holy’.
In the Bible, however, the word ’holy‘ in the Hebrew language means ’things belonging to God‘.
Things and people are ’made holy‘ by dedicating them for use by and for God.
When God shows up somewhere, like in the Jewish temple or at Moses’ burning bush, He transforms that space into a holy place. Even coal shovels and candlesticks can be holy, because they are set aside for use in God’s service.
Other words that convey that special use for God’s purposes are ‘sanctified’ or ‘consecrated’.
The New Testament calls Christians “a holy people”.
Looking around at those who follow Jesus that you know, you might disagree. But the point is that they are not holy because of what they do, they are holy because they belong to God and God is using them for His purposes.
Christians should indeed act in a manner that is upright and sin-free, but that comes out of the identity of holiness that God has already given them by forgiving their sin and accepting them as His children, not out of a striving on their part to become ‘good enough’ for God.
The Christian God, Yahweh, is perfect, sinless and all good. God’s standards are high and holy. Apart from Jesus’ atoning [paying the debt] sacrifice on the cross there is no way humans could meet them.
However, with Jesus as both Saviour and Lord of their lives, Christians are empowered to live holy lives — not sanctimonious lives, but lives full of humility, love, kindness, patience and self-control.
You too can be holy and live holy, no matter how you have lived up to this point. You can change the script of your life by committing yourself to God by means of a simple prayer such as the one on this page.
Becoming a peacemaker
by Rob Furlong
You don’t have to look very far in our world today to see how lacking we are in peace and peacemakers.
Right now, as you read this, there are 22 wars being waged around the world, on five separate continents, resulting in the deaths of 120,151 people in 2022 alone. Some of these conflicts have been going on for decades.
Closer to home, many of us have no peace in our personal lives or relationships. Perhaps a friend at school has turned against you or you are no longer speaking to a relative because of an argument neither of you can resolve.
Many people perpetually live their lives with a profound sense of deep sadness, emotional hurt and estrangement from God and people.
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Becoming a piece of world peace
By Rob Furlong
“A smile is the beginning of love.” – Mother Teresa
Agnes Gonxha was born in Skopje, the capital of modern-day North Macedonia and at the age of 18 entered the Order of the Sisters of Loreto with the intention of becoming a missionary to India – she arrived there in 1929. Known then as Sister Teresa, she was deeply moved by the overwhelming poverty and destitution of people living on the streets of Calcutta and sensing the call of God, in 1948 began working to alleviate their suffering.
Eventually joined by a group of young women, she founded the Missionaries of Charity with the vision of providing “wholehearted free service to helping the poorest among the poor.” They worked with AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis sufferers, allowing them to die with dignity in the Mission’s hospice, provided food, and founded orphanages, schools, and mobile clinics. In time her ministry grew to 4,500 nuns serving in 133 countries.
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