JCSM's Weekly Devotions (click here to listen!)

"Give Thanks to God, Family, and Friends"

Psalm 30:4  "Sing praise to the LORD, you saints of His, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name."

John 11:41-44  "Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.  And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, 'Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.  And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.'  Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth!'  And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth.  Jesus said to them, 'Loose him, and let him go.'"

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

1 Chronicles 16:8-12  "Oh, give thanks to the LORD!  Call upon His name; Make known His deeds among the peoples!  Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works!  Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the LORD!  Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face evermore!  Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth."

Insight: We have countless reasons to be thankful to God and to others.  The scriptures tell us to give thanks, so whether we do it regularly or not, it is our duty to continually thank God, our friends, and our family.  Think of the reasons why you're thankful and let those who you're thankful for know about it.

Prayer: "Dear Lord, bless us and make us like You.  Help us to be thankful and to thank others.  Thank You for being so good to us.  Forgive us when we're unthankful or forgetful.  Thank you for giving us more than we deserve.  Give us more faith in You and remove our worries and fears.  Help us to read your Word and see You as You really are.  Motivate, remind, and help us to thank You and others.  In Jesus' name, Amen."

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, on May 31, 1775, just three weeks after the victory of Fort Ticonderoga, invited Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, to address them.  He declared:

"We have rebelled against God.  We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it....  By many, the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism....

"My brethren, let us repent and implore the divine mercy.  Let us amend our ways and our doings, reform everything that has been provoking the Most High, and thus endeavor to obtain the gracious interpositions of providence for our deliverance....

"If God be for us, who can be against us?  The enemy has reproached us for calling on His name and professing our trust in Him.  They have made a mock of our solemn fasts and every appearance of serious Christianity in the land...

"May our land be purged from all its sins!  Then the Lord will be our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, and we will have no reason to be afraid, though thousands of enemies set themselves against us round about.

"May the Lord hear us in this day of trouble....  We will rejoice in His salvation, and in the name of our God, we will set up our banners!"

May 31, 1775, just three weeks after the victory of Fort Ticonderoga, invited Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, to address them.  He declared:

"We have rebelled against God.  We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it....  By many, the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism....

"My brethren, let us repent and implore the divine mercy.  Let us amend our ways and our doings, reform everything that has been provoking the Most High, and thus endeavor to obtain the gracious interpositions of providence for our deliverance....

"If God be for us, who can be against us?  The enemy has reproached us for calling on His name and professing our trust in Him.  They have made a mock of our solemn fasts and every appearance of serious Christianity in the land...

"May our land be purged from all its sins!  Then the Lord will be our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, and we will have no reason to be afraid, though thousands of enemies set themselves against us round about.

"May the Lord hear us in this day of trouble....  We will rejoice in His salvation, and in the name of our God, we will set up our banners!"

May 31, 1775, just three weeks after the victory of Fort Ticonderoga, invited Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, to address them.  He declared:

"We have rebelled against God.  We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it....  By many, the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism....

"My brethren, let us repent and implore the divine mercy.  Let us amend our ways and our doings, reform everything that has been provoking the Most High, and thus endeavor to obtain the gracious interpositions of providence for our deliverance....

"If God be for us, who can be against us?  The enemy has reproached us for calling on His name and professing our trust in Him.  They have made a mock of our solemn fasts and every appearance of serious Christianity in the land...

"May our land be purged from all its sins!  Then the Lord will be our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, and we will have no reason to be afraid, though thousands of enemies set themselves against us round about.

If you'd like to have the citations for the footnotes above, please email us.  If you'd like to see more quotes from those who framed and founded America, please click here: http://jcsm.org/AmericasFounders/.

(This explanation came from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained", by Dr. Jason Gastrich.  This book is on CD and gives over 4,000 answers to alleged Bible errors, regarding the entire Bible at http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.org.  There is also a 300 question workbook that accompanies the CD-ROM.)

This week's quotes are my lecture notes from Frank Sherwin.  He is an ICR scientist who spoke on the Mount St. Helens eruption.

Mount St. Helens
by Frank Sherwin

Frank has an M.A. in Zoology and studied under Gerald Schmidt. He has co-authored The Big Argument and has written in the Journal of Creation.

The Origins Battle

Courts, classrooms, and churches - each is a battleground

We refuse to bow to the Altar of Darwin.

2 Peter 3:5-6

The flood in Genesis was a worldwide flood.

The Yellowstone caldera formed in an explosion of magma more than 1000 times greater than the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. This eruption that formed Yellowstone

Four Stages of the Eruption

1. Earthquake 5.1 for 15 seconds
2. Landslide - largest in recorded history
3. Massive lateral explosion
4. Pyroclastic flows - approaching speed of sound

It was a northward facing blast and an unusual one.

Landslide - Over 2/3 of a cubic mile of rock, dirt, water, and debris rushed at 150-180 mph six miles to Spirit Lake.

The May 1980 Eruption - The force of water flashing to steam blew the top 1,300 feet off the north side of the volcano.

In Just 3 Days - 50 million tons of ash was distributed throughout North America.

The Mount St. Helens eruption follows the biblical model of catastrophe.  It took only minutes for the eruption to strip the soil down to bedrock; not billions of years.

What evolutionists say must take billions of years to happen actually happened very quickly during the worldwide flood and the cataclysmic events that accompanied it.

When the lava dome was tested in 2000, the radiometric dating techniques dated the eruption at 2.4 million years old.

In 1982, the Mount St. Helens eruption formed a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon in just 5 days.

Mount St. Helens is an outdoor, creation laboratory.

Sediment bands were quickly formed at the eruption and many were created in seconds or minutes (e.g. "pulsing").  Contrary to evolutionary assumptions, they don't take millions or billions of years to form.

The Grand Canyon

The formations in Mount St. Helens correlate with the formations in the Grand Canyon.

The banding in the Grand Canyon was likely formed in the year following the Flood.

Some secular geologists are now considering that the Grand Canyon was formed quickly.

Instant Grand Canyon

In 2002, NASA geologist Ross Irwin said according to pictures from the Mars Global Surveyor, there was a huge lake - enough to flood Texas and California - that eroded away a barrier and rampaged across a plain forming a huge gully called Ma'adim Vallis.  The force and volume of the water was enough to cave the gully 6,900 ft. deep and 550 miles long within a mater of months!  This has been reported in Science.

If this can happen in Mars, then why can't it happen on Earth?

Creation geology has been vindicated!

Grand Canyon: A Different View

Spirit Lake

Many logs were deposited upside down in Spirit Lake.

Fossilized trees running through different layers of sediment in Spirit Lake reveal how things could have fossilized quickly.

Shortly after the eruption, animals gave birth to their young at twice the normal rate.  Plant life began to quickly flourish.  Elk returned to the blast zone and have enjoyed the lack of trees.

If you'd like to read more quotes, we have thousands in our archive!  Visit http://quotes.jcsm.org.