As in the Days of Noah, Many knowledgeable men explain away strange occurances in the earth.

CNN SAYS: 

Experts warn of superstorm era to come

By Tim Lister, CNN

October 31, 2012 -- Updated 1817 GMT (0217 HKT)

 Over three decades, about 1.3 million square miles of Arctic sea ice has disappeared, equivalent to 42% of the area of the lower 48 states.

Climate models previously projected that the Arctic might lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100, but some scientists said they believe the trend is accelerating and that it will be gone long before then.

"In addition to the extent of sea ice, what remains is thinner than it used to be," said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Here's how it works: Less sea ice means warmer water. Sea surface temperatures off the coast of the Northeast United States are now the highest ever recorded.

"It's like leaving the fridge door open," Meier said. The only way to restrain the process would be to moderate temperature increases, which in turn would depend on lowering carbon dioxide emissions.

Jennifer Francis at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University has shown that a warmer Arctic tends to slow the jet stream, causing it to meander and in turn prolong weather patterns. It's called Arctic amplification, and it may be helping entrench drought in the northwest United States and lead to warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Related: Sandy provokes discussions on God, prayer and atheism

But there may be another effect.

"Larger swings in the jet stream allow frigid air from the Arctic to plunge farther south, as well as warm, moist tropical air to penetrate northward," Francis wrote in Yale University's Environment 360 blog. That's pretty much what happened this week, a spectacular collision of Arctic and tropical weather fronts.

A recent article in the journal Oceanography shed more light on the consequences of Arctic ice melt. Charles Greene at Cornell University and others wrote that fundamental changes in the behavior of the jet stream will "stack the deck in favor of severe winter weather outbreaks in the United States and Europe into the foreseeable future."

 {Ellen White says in RH, January 11,1887 par. 15}

  Already the restraining Spirit of God is being withdrawn from the earth. Hurricanes, storms, tempests, fire and flood, disasters by sea and land, follow each other in quick succession. Science seeks to explain all these. The signs thickening around us, telling of the near approach of the Son of God, are attributed to any other than the true cause. Men cannot discern the sentinel angels restraining the four winds that they may not blow until the servants of God are sealed; but when God shall bid his angels loose the winds, there will be such a scene of his avenging wrath as no pen can picture.  {RH, January 11, 1887 par. 14}
     We are standing on the threshold of great and solemn events. Prophecy is fast fulfilling. The Lord is at the door. There is soon to open before us a period of overwhelming interest to all living. The controversies of the past are to be revived. New controversies will arise. The scenes to be enacted in our world are not even dreamed of. Satan is at work through human agencies. Those who are making so great efforts to change the Constitution and secure a law enforcing the first day of the week little realize what will be the result. A crisis is just upon us.  {RH, January 11, 1887 par. 15} .

 {Prophet an Kings  page 278.1  By Ellen White}
The forbearance of God has been very great--so great that when we consider the continuous insult to His holy commandments, we marvel. The Omnipotent One has been exerting a restraining power over His own attributes. But He will certainly arise to punish the wicked, who so boldly defy the just claims of the Decalogue.  {PK 276.2} 
     God allows men a period of probation; but there is a point beyond which divine patience is exhausted, and the judgments of God are sure to follow. The Lord bears long with men, and with cities, mercifully giving warnings to save them from divine wrath; but a time will come when pleadings for mercy will no longer be heard, and the rebellious element that continues to reject the light of truth will be blotted out, in mercy to themselves and to those who would otherwise be influenced by their example.
     The time is at hand when there will be sorrow in the world that no human balm can heal. The Spirit of God is being withdrawn. Disasters by sea and by land follow one another in quick succession. How frequently we hear of earthquakes and tornadoes, of destruction by fire and flood, with great loss of life and property! Apparently these calamities are capricious outbreaks of disorganized, unregulated forces of nature, wholly beyond the control of man; but in them all, God's purpose may be read. They are among the agencies by which He seeks to arouse men and women to a sense of their danger.  {PK 277.1}
     God's messengers in the great cities are not to become discouraged over the wickedness, the injustice, the depravity, which they are called upon to face while endeavoring to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation. The Lord would cheer every such worker with the same message that He gave to the apostle Paul in wicked Corinth: "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city." Acts 18:9, 10. Let those engaged in soul-saving ministry remember that while there are many who will not heed the counsel of God in His word, the whole world will not turn from light and truth, from the invitations of a patient, forbearing Saviour. In every city, filled though it may be with violence and crime, there are many who with proper teaching may learn to become followers of Jesus. Thousands may thus be reached with saving truth and be led to receive Christ as a personal Saviour.
 
     God's message for the inhabitants of earth today is, "Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." Matthew 24:44. The conditions prevailing in society, and especially in the great cities of the nations, proclaim in thunder tones that the hour of God's judgment is come and that the end of all things earthly is at hand. We are standing on the threshold of the crisis of the ages. In quick succession the judgments of God will follow one another--fire, and flood, and earthquake, with war and bloodshed. We are not to be surprised at this time by events both great and decisive; for the angel of mercy cannot remain much longer to shelter the impenitent.  {Prophet an Kings  page 278.1  By Ellen White}  

It takes More faith to accept Evolution than Creation

Accident or Dilemma?

Do you know how this world, the sun, moon and stars, and the entire universe came into existence? Astronomers tell us that there are 200 billion stars or suns in the galaxy, the Milky Way, and that there are 100 million other known galaxies. All right, answer my question: How did all this come into existence? No, don’t tell me that all the billions of giant suns evolved out of nothing, or out of star dust. If so, where did the star dust come from?

I have a wrist watch on my wrist right now. If I were to tell you that no one made that watch, but that it just happened, you would laugh me to scorn. You know that somebody made it. It did not just happen. That is an utter impossibility. Then, what about this complex universe? Take some of the smaller things. Take the rose and the orchid. Who put them together with their beautiful colors and fragrance? Did they just happen? You know better than that. Even the humblest wild flower that grows in the woods bears evidence of the design of a master workman.

No one would accept a modern collegiate dictionary as just an accident. Wouldn’t you lift an eyebrow if you were informed that it is not the product of thousands of hours of patient research, but that it simply came about as the result of an explosion in a modern printing plant? You would laugh at such inanities.

And what about the fine computers that work out the precise route of space rockets? What would be your reaction if someone told you that this electronic marvel somehow evolved from the ruins of an ancient Greek library, ready-programmed with all the wisdom of that golden age? I’ll tell you what you’d do—you’d question the sanity of that “someone” who told you such nonsense. But tell me, why is it that modern man cannot conceive of the accidental evolution of a rocket, or a computer, or even a dictionary; and yet he can attribute the marvels of the human brain, which created all these, to chance? Why is this generation so willing to believe that man, his marvelous body, his incredible brain somehow evolved through millions of years with only blind nature and chance to direct?

We know that a rocket had to have intelligent creation, and that its course must have intelligent supervision. But I ask you, friends, are the speeding galaxies of the heavens, in their precision pathways—are they out there in space only because of some celestial accident?

Scientists don’t seem to know exactly how our world originated—possibly from some cosmic explosion of the restless gases of the distant past. That is the supposition. And then, several million years ago, they say, life appeared in its simplest form, followed by the slow magic of the ages, the wonders of accident and chance, the reign of tooth and claw, the survival of the fittest. And at last, life and civilization and culture as we know it today—the crowning miracle of unhurried evolution.

But just how much are you willing to attribute to the unlikely magic of accident and chance? If evolution happened, how did it happen? Would it be unreasonable to ask some specific questions? For example, how did tiny creatures of nature come by the fantastic design which enables them to miraculously survive extinction? Did you ever watch the fascinating activities of the common honey bee? Have you ever noticed that the bees are incredible architects? The hive is a masterpiece of engineering, with rows and rows of six-sided rooms with walls of wax. This marble palace—we call it the comb—is built by young bees under seventeen days old. Yet each little room is the same size, six-sided, with three pairs of walls facing each other. The walls of the rooms are only two thousandth of an inch thick, yet so strong that a pound of comb will support at least 25 pounds of honey. Think of that friends—only as thick as a hair of your head.

How do these young bees know that the hexagon has the smallest circumference, therefore requiring the smallest amount of building material? How do they know that hexagon cells are the best and most economical construction? Who told them? Yet they do it all without blueprints or drawing boards or compasses. And every cell is perfect, just the size to fit a bee.

How do they do it? Well, they hang themselves up like a festoon from the roof of the hive. Or it may be in a hollow of a tree. One bee hooks onto the roof, and another bee hooks onto his dangling legs, etc. These chains of bees grow longer and longer, and as they sway, they hook onto bees on the right and left until they form a living curtain. Now they hang up like this to produce wax. You see, there are four wax pockets on each side of the bee’s abdomen. And after about 24 hours of hanging, wax begins to appear from these pockets. When a bee feels its wax is ready, it climbs up over the other bees, takes the wax out of its pockets, chews it, and pats it onto the comb. At first they just pile on wax. Then they form rough cups, climb into them, and push. And, of course, a lot of other bees are pushing at the same time. The result—the perfect shape and the incredibly thin walls. And that’s the way the comb is built. Now this bees wax is a remarkable substance in itself, friends. It has the highest melting point of any known wax. This keeps it from melting in the 110 degree temperature of the summer heat.

But friends, the bees perform this work in perfect cooperation, as if their assignments were posted on a bulletin board. It must be a marvel of organization, you say. Yes, but who directs it? Who planted that incredible wisdom in the tiny brain of the bee? What engineer taught it how to construct a mathematically precise house which conforms to all the laws of science and nature? It almost seems that the bee has a computer brain which is programmed to building nothing less than perfect cells of wax.

There may be 40 to 75 thousand bees in a hive, or more, all working in perfect harmony, as a unit. But who is the leader? Certainly not the queen. The only time she exerts any leadership is when she is challenged by another queen and the bees follow her to a new hive. But otherwise, the queen bee is in reality nothing more than an egg-laying machine. In a single day she can lay 2,000 eggs. But she does nothing else, and their weight alone could be two to four times more than the bee.

Certainly the drones are not the leaders. These male bees are completely indolent. They are waiting for just one thing—and that is to mate with the queen bee when she soars off on her courtship flight. Only one in a hundred of the drones will ever make it. But what of the workers? They are the real marvels of the hive. Although they have no leader, each bee does just the right thing at the right time.

Bees need two things—pollen and nectar. Both are found in flowers. And as they fly off to the fields of flowers, they go marvelously equipped. In the first place, a honeybee is a fantastically engineered flying machine. Man-made freight planes can carry a payload of about 25 percent of their weight. But a bee can carry almost a hundred percent of its weight. The bee needs no propeller or jet. Its short, wide wings both lift and drive it. It can move straight up or down, or it can hover in mid-air. Its stubby wings fold in a split second when it dives into a flower. Or it can whirl its wings to cool the beehive.

The bee has three places for storing cargo. One is a tank inside its body in which it stores nectar. Then, on its hind legs, it has two storage baskets for carrying pollen. Imagine a freight plane with its load dangling underneath. Are these pollen baskets something that evolved because of a need? Well, man first wrote about the bee in 3000 B.C. It had the pollen baskets then. And it hasn’t changed since!

A bee can suck up a load of nectar in a minute. It takes three minutes for it to build up two bulging loads of pollen in the baskets on its hind legs. How does it do it? Well, the bee dives into a flower, its body picking up pollen by brushing past the pollen boxes. It splashes about in the flower, and the yellow powder clings to the hairs on its body. But no, it isn’t so simple. How does it get the pollen into the baskets? And how does it keep the pollen from blowing away in flight? The load must be moistened, pressed together, tamped down, and evenly balanced on each leg. But believe it or not, the bee does it—and all the while hovering in mid-air or hanging by one claw!

What kind of a brain does the little honeybee have? You haven’t heard anything yet. Let me tell you about the waggle dance. You see, when the hive stirs in the morning, there may be 10,000 bees ready to go out and load up. But where should they go? They wait patiently while perhaps a dozen scouts go out to locate the day’s plunder. When a scout bee finds treasure, it loads up and flies straight back to the hive. Here she goes through a peculiar performance. She gives samples of the nectar to the other bees and gets them all excited. Then, as they follow her around, she goes through a figure eight across the face of the comb. The angle at which she goes through the figure eight tells the others the direction of the field. But how far away is it? Bees are short sighted, and they fly high. They must know just how far to go before coming down to earth. So with each movement through the figure eight the scout executes a waggle dance by waggling her abdomen. The number of waggles in 15 seconds tells the distance to the field.

But the problem is not so simple as it appears. A field twice as far away will not be indicated by twice as many waggles, for the number executed is in reverse ratio to the distance. That is, the farther away the field, the fewer the waggles. For example, if it makes ten circles in 15 seconds, the field of flowers is 300 feet away. But if the scout moves in slow motion, say two circles in 15 seconds, the flowers are almost 4 miles away! Still more marvelous is the fact that the ratio will not be one of simple arithmetic, but a number indicated by a logarithmic figure. So the honeybee uses higher mathematics in directing the workers to the field of flowers! I say again, what kind of a brain does she have? Is this an accident?

I wonder if you realize just how necessary the honeybee is, not only to our economy, but even to life itself. Bees, you see, handle up to 80% of all the pollinating that is done by insects. To show just how important bees are in pollination, listen to this. As an experiment, one branch of a pear tree was tied with gauze so that bees could not get to it. The branch did not yield a single pear. Another branch, with no more blossoms than the other, but exposed to bees, produced 33 pears.

Now, of course, without plants and flowers, bees could not exist. But it works both ways. Without bees, plants and flowers could not exist. Without the plant kingdom there would be no oxygen, and the earth could not be inhabited. You and I could not even exist without the honeybee!

Now, did the honeybee, with all its fantastic equipment for its job, just happen? Through long ages? A little bit at a time? Well, think it through. Suppose the bee started out with wings that wouldn’t fold up to enable it to dive into a flower? How would it survive until it developed that kind of wing? What if it had no pollen baskets on its hind legs? What if it had the pollen baskets, but not the knee joints to press the pollen into the baskets, or the sense to know how to do it? What if it had no hairs on its body to collect the pollen—or the hairs but no way to comb off the pollen? What if it hadn’t developed a nectar tank—yet? What if it had no wax-making equipment—or didn’t know it was supposed to hang up in a festoon for 24 hours to make the wax come out? What if the wax would not withstand the high temperatures of the hive, as few waxes would? What if the bees didn’t know how to make royal jelly to feed the queen—and the queen died? What if a bee couldn’t find its way back to the hive—or back to a field of flowers?

The questions fairly tumble out. They are endless. I think you can see that any one piece of the bee’s physical equipment would be completely useless without all the others. To be of any use whatsoever, every bit of the bee’s equipment and know-how would have to have developed simultaneously—all at once—and instantly.

Or if evolution happened, consider this. That very first bee, away back there, sitting on the limb of a tree. What kind of bee was it? Was it a queen? But a queen could not survive without a whole colony of bees to feed her, and a drone with which to mate. And the drones have no other reason to exist except to mate with the queen. So they could not have come first. In fact, they could not exist without a queen, anyway—they have no other way to reproduce.

If evolution is true, the bee of today had to gradually develop all the marvelous apparatus and skill to manufacture his food, his hive, etc.—which means that the first bee didn’t have all the equipment, such as nectar sac, pollen bags and wax makers. They, supposedly, evolved over the ages of primeval time. Yet, even the evolutionists concede that the bee could not survive without each of the intricately designed features that he possesses RIGHT NOW. The only answer to this dilemma is that God made the bee in the beginning, perfectly equipped and divinely programmed to work and live exactly as he does today. What a testimony to the truth of instant creation by an omnipotent Creator!

sermon by :Joe Carew