Daily Devotional – December 28

Paleontology

The geological column in our textbooks has been used by evolutionists to represent creatures evolving over millions of years. Did you realize, however, that there are many “inconvenient” fossils? Here are just a few:

• Evolutionists have to explain from where birds came. So, they assume two-legged, upright walking dinosaurs evolved into birds. Yet, a fossil dinosaur with three fully-formed birds in its stomach has been found in China.
• Grass has been found in fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolite). Yet, for a century, evolutionists have taught that grass appeared 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. How could a dinosaur eat something that did not yet exist?
• The remains of a dinosaur were found alongside a fossil of a doglike mammal. Mammals of this size were not supposed to have evolved until long after the dinosaurs disappeared.
• Fossil pollen, evidence of flowering plants, has been found in the Precambrian layer 550 mya (million years ago), but flower pollen should not appear in the fossil record until 160 mya.
• Also found in the same layers and fossil beds with dinosaur fossils are ducks, squirrels, badger-like creatures, beaver-like creatures, platypuses, bees, pine trees, frogs, and others. According to a standard evolutionary timescale, these creatures belong in different geological times and should not be there. Yet they are.

These are just a few of the evolutionists’ “inconvenient fossils” found in the fossil layers. The Flood of Noah’s day generally buried things in ecological zones where they lived but at times washed creatures in from different zones. This is the best explanation for these “inconvenient fossils.” They were buried simultaneously, because they lived simultaneously. The simplest explanation is also the correct explanation - the Flood of Noah’s day best explains these “inconvenient fossils.”

And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

~ Genesis 7:21-23

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – November 14

Paleontology

Ask people when the dinosaurs died out, and they will usually answer 65 million years ago. Then why are scientists now finding soft tissues in some dinosaur bones? Dr. Mary Schweitzer was analyzing the fossilized thigh bone of a T-rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana and found, to her amazement, blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity and intact protein fragments. Can these survive 65 million years? No! Could they have survived since the Flood of Noah’s day (~ 4400 years ago)? Yes!

Many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans of old age show the same sort of details as Schweitzer reported in her T- rex. Since Schweitzer’s discovery, more paleontologists are cracking open dinosaur bones and finding, to their amazement, the same thing: blood vessels, cell nuclei, tissue elasticity and protein fragments. Dinosaurs’ soft tissues reveal they did not die out millions of years ago. If these dinosaur bones are not millions of years old, then neither is the earth’s rock layers in which these bones are found. The earth’s sedimentary rock strata were formed as sediment-filled water deposited layer after layer of sediment during the year-long flood of Noah’s day (about 4400 years ago), trapping dinosaur remains in the deposits. Dinosaur soft tissue shouts that we live on a young earth!

And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

~ Genesis 8:5

Daily Devotional – October 4

Paleontology

Every summer, paleontologist Philip Bell searches the riverbeds of a certain area in Alberta, Canada, looking for newly exposed fossils from the spring run-off. June of 2012 proved to provide a jackpot! On the riverbed cliff a hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) with actual skin was exposed! Philip found not just an impression of skin, but actual dinosaur skin! The skin was glossy black but still contained pigment. Scientists are studying the skin’s melanosomes to determine the actual color.

Was this type of dinosaur grey, green or orange? The bigger question is, “How could dinosaur skin have lasted for some 65 million years?” Shouldn’t it have been totally decomposed? Since when does skin last 65 million years!? If we put on our biblical glasses, we can see how such dinosaur skin can still exist. Dinosaurs were caught and buried quickly in the Flood of Noah only about 4400 years ago. Real dinosaur skin shouts the Genesis Flood!

Behold now behemoth…his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.

~ Job 40:15a, 16-18

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – September 27

Paleontology

One of the greatest mysteries of evolution is not how things change but why things don’t change for the better. Mutations are real, and random changes deteriorate the DNA coding as each new generation makes copies of itself. It is inevitable that any organism will change over time as these copying mistakes destroy useful information within an organism. Thus, the result is downward deterioration, not upward advancement. But even more startling is the idea that any creature could remain unchanged for hundreds of millions of generations. Yet, this unchanging nature of creatures in the fossil record (called stasis) is quite common. Small changes over time have been made but not enough for a current species to be unrecognizable from its fossilized form.

It is widely taught that birds exist because of small changes in dinosaurs over time. In other words, over millions of years, dinosaurs turned into birds. Yet, dinosaur bones have been found buried with a host of other creatures - such as crocodiles, dragonflies, redwood trees, grass, clams, and birds. They look essentially identical to modern living examples, so we call them “living fossils.” Dinosaurs evolved into birds while other creatures remained unchanged?! God’s word is clear; He created birds on Day 5 and dinosaurs on Day 6 of creation week. Dinosaurs did not evolve into birds!

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

~ Genesis 1:24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – September 13

Paleontology

Trilobites once lived on the ocean floor. We have identified many different species of trilobites; most had two compound eyes, some had no eyes, and others had eyes on stalks like snails. But all trilobite eyes have been found to be unique and complex. Their eyes were not made of living cells, but of a see-through-crystal substance like tiny “rock crystals”. That is why the eyes of these creatures were easily fossilized and we can know so much about them. Each compound eye is made up of many single lenses. The optics of these “rock crystals” allowed the trilobite to see things equally well whether they were far away or close up - at the same time! How trilobites were able to do this is very complicated. Each “rock crystal” was made up of two materials. These two lenses were affixed to each other and so designed that they solved the problem of blurriness or spherical aberration. We did not solve these optics problems until Rene Descartes (1637), Christian Huygen (1690), and others addressed the problem. These scientists had to employ difficult mathematical formulas that allow us to enjoy the optics we use today. Yet, the trilobites’ eyes used these laws of optics for their complex lenses.

Trilobites are mostly found in Cambrian rock. The Cambrian layer is near the bottom of the geological column that evolutionists claim contain the fossilized remains of the simplest creatures. Do trilobite eyes sound simple? Dr. Riccardo Levi-Setti, an expert on trilobites, said that the eyes of a trilobite could qualify for a patent. The design of the trilobite eye makes use of Fermat’s principle, the Abbe sine law, Snell’s laws of refraction, and the optics of birefringent crystals. Of course, the God of the universe, who made the trilobite eye, does not need to patent his invention. He owns everything anyway.

One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.

~ Psalm 145:4

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – September 5

Paleontology

When Europeans first settled in Australia, they recorded Aboriginal stories of a creature called the bunyip. This huge creature lived in swamps and had a “blood-chilling cry.” In the 1800s, in Victoria, Australia, the bones of a bunyip were found. It was reported in the July 1845 edition of the Goolong Advertiser newspaper that an Aboriginal had identified this as a bunyip bone. He then drew a picture of the bunyip. This picture was taken to other Aborigines, who had no chance to communicate with the first one, and each identified the bone and picture as a bunyip. The newspaper reported a number of sightings of the bunyip; it looked like an alligator standing 12 feet tall. Its hind legs were thick and strong, with forelegs longer. It had long claws. It could swim. It walked on land with its hind legs and head erect. It was covered with multicolored scales and laid pale blue eggs double the size of an emu’s egg. Its snout was like a duck’s bill.

The description and newspaper sketch bear a strong resemblance to the duck-billed dinosaurs - 13 years before the first fossil duck-billed dinosaur bone was described. Dinosaurs and man did live together. Today, many dinosaurs have gone extinct. When we put on our biblical glasses, we would expect these types of widespread reports after the Flood as the dinosaurs left the ark and spread out and filled the Earth.

Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

~ Genesis 8:19

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – August 30

Paleontology

What a fossil find! It was a blood-filled female mosquito locked in oil shale. Jurassic Park, here we come! Near Glacier National Park in Montana, fossil collectors have dug up more than 16,000 tiny insect fossils in oil shale. One of the most unique finds was a female mosquito whose abdomen was filled with blood. She was buried and fossilized so rapidly that her last blood meal never had time to be digested. That itself is testimony to the catastrophic nature of the worldwide Flood that created these oil shales.

“The abdomen of a blood-engorged mosquito is like a balloon ready to burst. It is very fragile,” said the lead paleontologist. The odds against this mosquito becoming fossilized by slow evolutionary processes are simply astronomical. From an evolutionary view, our blood-filled mosquito had to have been blown to the water’s surface, sunk quickly to the bottom, and covered with oxygen-free sediment to prevent rapid degradation - all without disrupting the engorged abdomen that was, “ready to burst.” A better explanation is a sudden catastrophic burial of this mosquito along with countless other creatures beneath tons of water-borne sediment from the global Flood.

Much of the fossil record is a record of the order of burial, not the evolving of one creature into another. In fact, this supposed 46 million year old mosquito looks exactly like today’s mosquitoes from North America. Not a hint of evolutionary transformation! This fossilized, blood-filled mosquito is a testimony to the recent global Flood of Noah’s time.

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

~ Genesis 7:24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – August 15

Paleontology

Noah took two of every kind of land animal on board the Ark, including dinosaurs. After getting off the Ark, these dinosaurs spread around the world. The ancient histories of many cultures document dinosaur encounters.

Britain’s history contains hundreds of stories about large reptiles called dragons.

• According to one account, a large reptile killed and ate King Morvidus in 336 B.C.
• Just over 100 years ago, elderly Welsh folk told of a colony of winged serpents (pterosaurs?) that lived in the woods around Penllin Castle in Glamorgan. These “winged serpents were the terror of old and young alike…they were described as very beautiful,… looked as if they were covered with jewels of all sorts…when angry, they flew over people’s heads… they were as bad for poultry as foxes...they were terrors in farmyards.”
• In 1405, after an unsuccessful attempt by local archers to kill the dragon with its impenetrable hide, the villagers near Sudbury drove into a swamp a “dragon vast in body with a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length. Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep.” After the Flood, people also spread across the Earth, but who would want these terrifying creatures living near their village? Many dinosaurs likely went extinct due to human expansion. When we put on our biblical glasses, it is no surprise to find these types of widespread “dragon” reports. Dinosaurs definitely did not go extinct 65 million years ago!

Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

~ Genesis 8:19

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – July 30

Paleontology

Snakes alive! A snake that was longer than a school bus (48 feet long) and weighing more than a ton was found in Columbia! It’s twice as long as the largest living Anaconda, but don’t worry, it’s long dead. This fossilized snake was dug out of a coal pit mine along with other giant fossils – turtles with shells twice the size of manhole covers, crocodiles more than 12 feet long, seven-foot long lungfish (2-3 times longer than today), exotic leaves and plants. The fossilized snake, named Titanoboa cerrejonensis is the largest snake ever found. They even dug up the snake’s fragile skull!

Snakes are cold-blooded - meaning their body temperature changes with the outside temperature. Scientists believe such a large snake had to have lived in a rainforest climate to grow so large. The fossil record reveals that before the Flood of Noah’s day creatures could grow quite large and the environment was very different. Grew much larger. Paleontologists have great fun digging up this lost world.

There were giants in the earth in those days....

~ Genesis 6:4

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.

Daily Devotional – June 29

Paleontology

Much publicity has been given to feather-like structures found in amber (assumed to be 70 million years old).1 Why is this significant? If someone does not want to believe that birds were created fully-formed and fully-functional, the only other possibility is that some other animal must have evolved into a bird. Thus, it is widely taught that dinosaurs changed into birds. Since this feather-containing-amber is from the “age of dinosaurs”… it is assumed that these feathers came from feather-covered dinosaurs. But let’s look at what was actually found – some fuzzy structures and some modern-looking feathers.

According to the researchers, “We’ve got feathers that look to be little filamentous hair-like feathers, we’ve got the same filaments bound together in clumps, and then we’ve got a series that are for all intents and purposes identical to modern feathers,” McKellar said. “We’re finding some that look to be dinosaur feathers and another set that are pretty much dead ringers for modern birds.”

No bones, no skin, no pictures. In other words, bird feathers and frayed fragments of who-knows-what were preserved in amber. Ignored are fully-formed birds found in lower rock layers. Ignored are all the other creatures found in amber: well preserved insects, flowers, moss, lizards, and mammal hair. Of course, that is exactly what we would find if there was a world-wide flood as trees were ripped up and knocked against each other, releasing resin. During the raging Flood of Noah’s day, huge floating log mats would have had trees oozing resin in which feathers, insects, fuzz and other critters would have been captured. Then sediments would cover them and amber would be formed.

Dinosaurs and birds were created together during that first week of creation. Both were wiped out in vast numbers and buried during the Flood of Noah - which is when the world’s amber deposits formed. The feathers found in this amber are simply from a bird, not a dinosaur.

And God created… every winged fowl after his kind:  and God saw that it was good.

~ Genesis 1:21

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.