Activated Magazine 2005 / 04

(Traditional Chinese Activated mag 4 of volume 2--text mostly from English issues July 2003 and September 2001)

cover--

Miracle of Creation

Holy Hole

Playing God?

 

pg 2

This is Activated magazine volume 2 issue 4. If you are interested in receiving more issues or ordering some of our inspiring and strengthening Bible-based publications, please write, phone or e-mail us today! Thank you!

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Unless indicated otherwise, all
Scripture quotations in Activated! are
from the Chinese Union Bible, Chinese Living Bible,
Modern Chinese Bible & new Chinese Bible.

Personally Speaking
There's no question: Science and technology have made astounding advances in the past several decades. New worlds of information are being opened to us almost daily. We send spacecraft to chart and study the universe. Robots probe the oceans' depths to discover previously unknown life forms or peer inside the wreck of the Titanic. Scientists unlock the mysteries of DNA and chart the human genome. But the more we learn about the world we live in, the more we see how intricately designed and beyond our understanding it is.
How did such an amazingly complex and wonderful world come into existence? Was the universe born 20 billion years ago when "a very small agglomeration of matter of extremely high density and temperature" exploded, as proponents of the big bang theory claim? Did life on Earth originate by chance some 3.4 billion years ago, and did we evolve from lower life forms, as evolutionists teach? Is the Bible's explanation of creation--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1)--at odds with true science?
In this issue of Activated we look into some of these questions.

Hsu Ling
For the Activated family

pg 3
Are Science and Faith in God Compatible?
Nobel Laureates Speak Out
"For me, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for an orderly, intelligent universe testifies to the greatest statement ever uttered: 'In the beginning, God...'"
--Arthur Comptom (1892-1962), awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the transter of energy from electromagnetic radiation to a particle, known as the Compton Effect.
* * *
"If I had no other data than the early chapters of Genesis, some of the Psalms, and other passages of Scripture, I would have arrived at essentially the same picture of the origin of the universe as is indicated by the scientific data."
--Arno Penzias (1933- ), awarded a 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic background radiation-patterns that physicists have interpreted as showing that the universe was created from nothing.
* * *
"The principle of [divine] purpose ... stares the biologist in the face wherever he looks. ... The probability for such an event as the origin of DNA molecules to have occurred by sheer chance is just too small to be seriously considered."
--Ernst Boris Chain (1906-1979), awarded a 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work with penicillin.
* * *
"When confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why the only possible answers are religious. ... I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life."
--Arthur L. Schawlow (1921- ); shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in physics for the development of laser spectroscopy.
* * *
"Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly people."
--Max Born (1882-1970), shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum mechanics.
* * *
"There is no incompatibility between science and religion. ... Science shows that God exists."
--Derek Barton (1918-1998), shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the concept and applications of conformation.
* * *
"I think only an idiot can be an atheist."
--Christian B. Anfinsen (1916-1995), shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in amino-acid structure and biological activity of the enzyme ribonuclease.
* * *
"So many of my colleagues are Christians that I can't walk across my church's fellowship hall without tripping over a dozen physicists."
--William D. Phillips (1948- ), awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for using lasers to produce temperatures only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
* * *
"I only trace the lines that flow from God."
--Albert Einstein (1879-1955), awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in theoretical physics, especially the law of photoelectric effect.

pg 4-5
The Miracle of Creation
David Brandt Berg
People can't help but believe in God if they just look at creation. All they have to do is look at the creation to know Somebody had to design it, pattern it, put it together, and make it work like it does. God's beautiful creation works so beautifully, so systematically, so perfectly, it's obvious that all that didn't just happen by accident. Creation, so-called Nature, is not just natural. It's God-created. It's supernatural. It's miraculous!
If you don't know whether God exists, just look at the sea, the sky, the clouds, the mountains, the valleys, the trees, the flowers--everything. They're all virtually shouting, "There is a God! Look what He made! Look what a beautiful world He made for you to live in!"
The greatest proof of God's existence is His creation. The Bible says that God's "invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Romans 1:20). The existence of our invisible God is proven by His visible creation. It's "clearly seen" through the beautiful world He made.
Evolutionists try to explain away creation by saying that it just happened by accident and God had nothing to do with it, that it somehow just threw itself together. Dr. Robert A. Millikan, winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for physics, had a good answer to that: Just as there had to be a watchmaker behind the synchronized perfection and order of every watch, so there had to be a Creator behind the synchronized perfection of the universe.
Yet evolutionary doctrine has become the general theme of modern science and is now referred to as the "great principle" of biology. But a principle, according to the dictionary, is a foundation truth or fact; the basis of other truths--and evolution has never been proven to be either a truth or a fact, much less the foundation or basis of other truths.
There is no proof for evolution. It has to be believed; therefore it's a religion. Even the founding father of this false faith, Charles Darwin himself, confessed, "The belief in natural selection [evolution] must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations. When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed, nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory."
So evolution is really a religion of unbelief in God. That's its whole purpose: to eliminate faith in God and to foster the false belief that the creation created itself; God had nothing to do with it, so there doesn't need to be a God.
The first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible says, ªIn the beginning, God--not chaos, not some nebulous cloud of gases--created the heavens and the earthº (Genesis 1:1). And a few verses later, "God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27). God formed man out of what? Previous life forms? Apes? Beasts? "And God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). This is the truth of God's Word!
Even if you don't believe the Bible, reasonable scientists concede that if the world's two or three million species of animal and plant life came about by evolution, we would be ten miles deep in fossils of evolutionary "missing links." Instead, the evolutionists search the world over trying to find one! Nearly every one of those fossils that evolutionists claim to be missing links have now been debunked, and some are confessed fakes, like Piltdown Man.
Evolution has no foundation in fact whatsoever. There's no evidence for it. No discovery has been made to prove it. As one of its foremost proponents, Margaret Mead wrote in her introduction to her textbook on anthropology: "We as honest scientists must confess that science has yet to discover one single iota of concrete evidence to prove the evolutionary theory!"
Do you believe in God?--Look at the world; look at the beautiful trees; look at the flowers; look at the sea; look at the sky. Does God love you? You can see it and feel it in the beautiful world He made for you.
God created this wonderful world for you to live in and enjoy, and He is the only One who can give meaning to the universe and purpose to the planets and love to our hearts and peace to our minds and health to our bodies and rest to our spirits and happiness to our lives and joy to our souls.
Pull quote:
Does God love you? You can see it and feel it in the beautiful world He made for you.

pg 6-7
Amazing Facts
By Anthony Mizrany
Have you ever wondered how the theory of evolution measures up to basic laws of physics and other findings of true science? The following may surprise you.
The laws of thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics states: "Matter cannot be created or destroyed." So how did everything get started? Evolution has no answer to this whatsoever. Creation says simply that God made it all by outright miracle, and He made it so that it couldn't be added to or destroyed. This answer fits perfectly-and it's the only one available!
The second law of thermodynamics states: "Everything tends toward disorder." In other words, if you leave something alone long enough, it doesn't get better, it gets worse (e.g., decay, corrosion, "wear and tear," etc.). This is the absolute opposite of the theory of evolution, which says that everything is getting better and better all the time, evolving into higher, more complicated life forms. The Bible agrees with the second law of thermodynamics. "You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the Earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; and they will all grow old like a garment" (Hebrews 1:10-11).
The law of conservation of angular momentum
This law states: "If a spinning object explodes, the pieces that fly off will spin in the same direction." In other words, if an object spinning clockwise explodes, all the fragments will spin clockwise. This is a law. It always happens. This is bad news for the "big bang" theory!
If the big bang had actually happened, then everything, by law, should be spinning in the same direction-but it's not! According to evolution, all the planets in our solar system came from the sun, but Venus and Uranus are spinning backwards! There are 60 moons in our solar system, and many of them are also spinning backwards. Several are even orbiting backwards!
The age of the solar system: 6,000 years, or billions of years?
With the advent of lasers and atomic clocks, measurements of time, size, and distance are far more accurate than ever before. Did you know...
The sun burns off 5 million tons of gas per second. That means, of course, that the sun used to be bigger. If the biblical account of Creation is true, the universe and everything in it is about 6,000 years old. At the rate the sun is burning up, the difference between its size 6,000 years ago and its size now is negligible.-Good news for life on Earth! But at that same rate, the sun would have been so much bigger and therefore so much closer to Earth as "recently" as 20 or 30 million years ago that no life forms-not even bacteria, much less dinosaurs-would have been possible. Meanwhile, evolutionists contend the sun is about 4.7 billion years old, and that life on Earth began forming in the oceans about 3.4 billion years ago.
Newton's law of universal gravitation tells us that the bigger any two heavenly bodies are, the greater the gravitational pull between them, and as those bodies come closer to each other, the gravitational pull between them increases by the "inverse square" (e.g., at half the distance, the gravity is quadrupled). So a significantly older and larger sun would have exerted a significantly stronger gravitational pull, and Earth and the other planets could not have existed except in far more distant orbits. This fact creates more problems for the theory of evolution, because as the sun decreased to its present size and its gravitational pull diminished, the planets would not have been pulled in to smaller and closer orbits, but rather would have drifted into larger, more distant orbits.
Earth's magnetic field is getting weaker. Archaeological measurements show that Earth's magnetic field was 40% stronger 1,000 years ago than it is today. If Earth's magnetic field is caused by a decaying electric current in Earth's metallic core-the most plausible explanation-Earth could not be much older than about 10,000 years, or else that electrical current's original strength would have been large enough to melt the planet.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are cooling off. Jupiter, for example, radiates about twice as much energy as it receives from the sun. Saturn radiates about three times as much as it receives from the sun. If the solar system were billions or even millions of years old, these five planets would have been dead cold a long time ago.
Saturn's rings are expanding. In other words, the "clouds" of particles (thought to be a mix of rocks, frozen gases, and water ice) that make up Saturn's rings are becoming larger and less dense. At the rate they are expanding, they would have dissipated long ago if the solar system were anywhere near as old as evolutionists contend it is.

pages 8 - 9
HOLY HOLES

 

Where would we be
without holes? Where
would people be
without seven holes in their
heads? (Count ’em!) If it
weren’t for your seven holes,
you couldn’t eat or taste or
smell or hear or see or even
breathe. And actually, you’ve
got lots more holes than that,
because every little pore in
your skin is a hole. Without
those little pores, your skin
couldn’t breathe and you
couldn’t sweat. Without holes,
you wouldn’t have any hair
either, because every hair
grows in a little hole called a
follicle.
Holes are an almost endless
subject because there are
so many of them! It seems
like everything is composed of
holes. Your whole body is full
of holes. Your blood vessels
are holes, your lungs are holes,
your heart’s got big holes in it
for the blood to flow in and
out, and your navel is a hole
without which you couldn’t
have been born. Wow! There
are so many important holes!
We’re really full of holes!
The whole world is full of
holes! If it weren’t for holes,
there wouldn’t be any pretty
trees or flowers or vegetables
or fruit, because they all grow
in holes in the ground and
they’re full of holes: The sap in
the trees flows through holes,
and the juice in the leaves
flows through holes.

What is a house but a hole
in which you live? And if your
house didn’t have window
holes, you couldn’t look out or
let the light and air in. Without
holes, there wouldn’t be any
taps for water, and you’d get
awfully thirsty. And worst of
all, the house wouldn’t even
have a door, so you couldn’t
get into it in the first place—or
if you were inside, you couldn’t
get out! How many other
useful holes can you think of?
The earth itself is a hollow
sphere full of fire, and every
now and then the fire comes
out through holes called volcanoes.
All the seas are great
big holes in the ground full of
water, and all the lakes and
springs and wells are holes,
too. We get diamonds and
other jewels and all kinds of
minerals—gold and silver and
copper and iron and tin and
lots of others—out of holes
in the ground called mines.
We wouldn’t have any of these
useful and valuable things if it
weren’t for holes. The world is
one great big ball of holes!
And if you could look real
close, you would see that
everything is made up of very
little holes full of energy, called
atoms. So everything is mostly
holes with just a little bit of
something around them.
Everything is more nothing
than anything—like the universe
is mostly space. The universe
is a great big hole full of
nothing, except for few things
called stars and planets and
moons and things like that,
which are all very, very small
compared to all that nothing
called space that surrounds
them. The universe is such a
great big hole that we don’t
even know where it ends. So
much nothing!
The Bible says that God
even hung the world on nothing
(Job 26:7), and that He
made it out of nothing (Genesis
chapter 1; Hebrews 11:3).
So you see, there is a lot more
nothing than anything else,
and everything is made mostly
out of nothing. God makes
everything out of nothing—
nothing surrounded by Him!
If you can believe in God,
then anything is possible,
because He makes everything
out of nothing—even you and
me! We’re nothing and we’re
impossible except for God. He
takes our nothing and makes
it something. He’s like the
circle around our nothing that
makes it something. With God
all around you, even your
nothing can be something.
There’s always an end to
something, but there’s never
an end to nothing. So if you’ll
just be nothing, you can even
be bigger than something.
There are square holes and
round holes and all kinds of
holes, and it takes all kinds of
pegs to fill them, so whatever
kind of peg you are, somewhere
there’s a hole where
you’ll fit. And no matter what
kind of hole you are, God’s got
you pegged!
All holes are nothing made
for something, so if you feel
like nothing, there’s something
for you somewhere. Are you
a hole? Then God’s got something
for you!
Folks that aren’t holes can’t
have anything, because they
already think they’re something,
when they are really
nothing. The Bible says: “If
anyone thinks himself to be
something, when he is nothing,
he deceives himself”
(Galatians 6:3), and God “has
fi lled the hungry with good
things, and the rich He has
sent away empty” (Luke 1:53).
If a hole is already full, God can't put anything into it. Everything falls out when He tries to put something into it, because it's already so full of something that it can't hold anything more.
God loves holes, because He loves to fill them up. Are you a good hole full of nothing? Then God can fill you with something and make you a very happy hole full of anything God wants to fill you with! And do you know what love is? It's a hole that needs to be filled--plus something to fill it with, like you and me and Jesus.
And do you know what? Jesus even called Himself a hole: the Door (John 10:9). He is the Hole you've got to get through to get into His Father's house, and He is the only Hole you can go through (John 14:6). Have you entered the Father's house through Jesus, the Hole, the only Door?

Coming Next…

In this busy, fast paced and competitive modern world, facing pressure is a common thing. After having Jesus in our lives, what big differences does He really make? Can Jesus help us to make many important decisions everyday, deal with all the petty little things with ease, and to relieve the pressure that we encounter?
If you want to have this peace in your heart, please read the next issue of Activated!

pages 10 - 12
The Missing Link
Joanna Alcassas
I grew up in Communist Russia, when everything and everyone was under the tight supervision of the KGB, and the few people who believed in God and Jesus kept it secret. My father worked for the government, which meant our family was supervised even closer than most. No one ever spoke about faith. No one ever said there was a God. Religion was a fairy tale for the faint-hearted. "Yuri Gagarin [the Soviet cosmonaut who was the first human to fly in space] was in space and he didn't see God," our schoolteachers told us, "because there is no God."
The only "holy" thing, the only thing that everyone respected and feared was the Communist Party. At the age of nine I had the honor of becoming the first among my peers to enter the Young Pioneers, the Communist youth organization. I swore the traditional oath declaring myself an atheist, and was determined to uphold the teachings of Grandpa Lenin.
I filled my days with studies of physics and astronomy, and was headed for the bright future my beloved government promised--a great education and many years of work in a science laboratory, all for the good of Mother Russia. I needed no God in my life.
Then something happened that shook my Communist beliefs.
My family was going to visit friends in Zelenogorsk, a little town not far from our home in St. Petersburg (Leningrad during the Communist era), but my mother refused to go. "I had a dream," she said. "If we will go now, we will have an accident and might not survive. I saw a truck dropping concrete blocks on our car while we were stopped for a red light."
At the time, Russian truckers were notoriously careless with their cargo--after all, they received the same monthly allotment from the government, regardless of how they did their job. It was not uncommon to see a truckload of goods scattered all over the road.
My father refused to listen to "the woman's superstitions," so off we went. Halfway to Zelenogorsk we got stuck in traffic. My father took a detour. As he turned a corner, we found ourselves at a stoplight just as it turned red. Directly in front of us was a huge truck carrying concrete blocks. An eerie feeling came over us.
My father's face turned pale as he tried to steer away from the truck, but with other cars behind us there was little room to maneuver. After what seemed an eternity, he managed to pull away. Then Mother's dream came true.
The plank that was meant to hold the concrete blocks in the truck cracked under the weight, and we watched speechless as the blocks toppled out of the truck and crushed the car that had pulled up into our place. We were shaken but safe--and I would never forget the events of that day!
I tried to find a plausible, logical explanation to my mother's prophetic dream, but couldn't find any. There was only one explanation, and it seemed neither plausible nor logical: God had given her that glimpse of the future to save our lives.
The next night I did something very unusual for me--I prayed. "God, if You really do exist and You spared our lives in that accident, then show me once more that You care. Send someone to talk to me about You. If You do, I will believe."
A few minutes later I stepped onto the dark street, my mind teeming with questions. Had God done a miracle to spare my life? If so, why? Was He going to answer my prayer and give me another sign? I felt goose bumps as I thought about what might happen next.
I hadn't taken more than ten steps when someone handed me a beautiful poster. "God is love," it stated, "and He loves you!" I was stunned.
"Why are you giving this to me?" I asked.
"Because God told me to," the stranger answered. "He wants to be there for you."
I can't remember what else was said, but I ended up praying with that stranger to receive Jesus as my Savior. We also arranged for me to visit her at home two days later, when she was going to give a Bible study to a small group of new Christians.
About two months later I made up my mind to become a missionary. I was seventeen. My parents didn't take me seriously at first, but as I was packing my bags to go to a Christian youth camp, my father walked into my room. "Where do think you are going?!" he thundered.
"I want to become a missionary and help people," I answered. "It's just for three months, Father." My mother overheard us and joined the argument on my father's side.
"Three months!" my father yelled. "Don't you realize that is plenty of time for people to find out that my daughter is associating with foreigners who are Christians? I will be kicked out of the Communist Party, and could even be suspected of being a spy! We will have no jobs, no money, and you will be to blame!"
It was 1991, and the Soviet Union had just broken up. "Things will be different now," I tried to tell him.
He wouldn't listen. His lecture went on for four hours, but didn't change my convictions one bit. In my heart I knew that God had called me to be His servant, and I was going to follow that call no matter what.
When my mother saw that their arguments were getting nowhere, she decided to go with me and find out for herself what kind of people I was seeing--and she became a Christian herself during the first meeting she attended!
That night I had another heated discussion with my father, and to his surprise Mother took my side this time. Finally he agreed to let me "give God a try," providing God gave him a sign.
That same night his simple, old-fashioned watch switched over to daylight saving time by itself. The next morning, when he realized that his was the only timepiece in the house that showed the new time without being adjusted, he remembered that he had asked God to give him a sign and he was overjoyed at how He had. My father received Jesus that day, and ever since then he has been proud to be a Christian. "The Communists only promised us a bright future," he tells people. "God actually has the means to give it and to answer our prayers."
I did become a missionary. During the past twelve years I have seen many more signs and miracles that proved to me that God exists. And best of all, I found what had been missing in my life. It was the link that connected my heart to God's--Jesus.
Joanna Alcassas is a volunteer with The Family.

 

page 13

ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
Q: What should I do when I feel my faith in God and
the Bible is being attacked by secular society?

A: THE BIBLE MAKES IT CLEAR that we should have the conviction to stand
up for our faith, while at the same time exercising love and wisdom and
making sure that our personal example backs up our words. Believing in
God and the Bible and having Jesus in our hearts is supposed to make a
positive difference in our lives. That is what others need to see and hear.

It’s natural for people to talk about what’s important to them. If they
have a favorite sports team that wins the championship, they get excited
and tell others about it. If they make a great business deal or find a great
buy, they tell others. If they find a diet or health tip that works for them,
they talk about it. Why shouldn’t it be the same with you and your faith?
You have as much right to talk about what’s important to you as anyone
else has.

If you speak from your personal experience (“It happened to me!”),
people have either got to say “I don’t believe you” or “It must be true,
because you say so.” Tell how God has proven Himself to be real to you,
and how your faith has helped you.

Don’t be intimidated by intellectual or philosophical questions, or worry about trying
to answer others’ complicated arguments. The apostle Paul said, “My speech and
my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of
the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4 KJV) and “I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent
deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from
the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3).

When it comes right down to it, most people would give anything to be truly happy. So if you can show
them that you are happy and they can be too, they will be more likely to let go of their secular atheistic doctrines,
unprofitable theories, complicated
(to be continue on page 15)
Pull quote:
Most people would give anything to be truly happy.

 

pages 14 - 15

Signs of the Times
Playing God?-Facts and Thoughts on Human Cloning
By Joseph Candel

            Reports of breakthroughs in cloning are becoming more frequent in the news. Along with a sense of wonder at what science is now capable of, those reports also raise complex and troubling questions. Is cloning within acceptable moral and ethical bounds? Could the benefits ever outweigh the risks-the ends justify the means? How would cloning change what it means to be a human being? What does God think about all this?

Defining the cloning debate
The term “cloning” is widely used in science, and simply means making a copy of something. A scientist who makes a copy of a strand of DNA, for example, would describe that as cloning. There is nothing morally problematic about that. The controversy is over the reproduction of advanced life forms through cloning, and especially research aimed at eventually cloning humans.

The cloning process
Cloning of humans would sidestep the traditional process of reproduction in which the male sperm fertilizes the female egg. Instead, it would create a person from an embryo by transplanting the DNA-containing nucleus of a cell from either a man or woman into a woman’s egg from which the nucleus has been removed. So instead of producing a child whose DNA makeup is a composite of his or her parents’, the clone’s DNA would be-at least in theory-an identical copy of the “original.” (In theory, because attempts to clone animals have so far shown a very high incidence of abnormalities.)

Cloning milestones to date
February 24, 1997: Scientists at Scotland’s Roslin Institute announce successful reproduction of a sheep named Dolly using DNA from a single adult sheep cell.
July 1997: The British scientists who made Dolly clone Polly the lamb, who carries human genes. They hope to clone herds of identical sheep that can produce human proteins for medical use.
December 1997: Science magazine proclaims the cloning of Dolly the leading scientific advance of the year.
February 2002: Japanese researchers who cloned a dozen mice report that virtually all the animals died early, casting doubts on the safety of cloning. The same month, scientists report that cloned mice have become obese.
February 2002: Scientists at U.S. Texas A&M University say they cloned a house cat and present a two-month-old kitten they call cc, short for carbon copy.
May 2002: A U.S. fertility expert, Panayiotis Zavos, tells a congressional panel that “2002 will be the year of the clones” and says he is working to clone a human later in the year. He urges Congress to keep cloning legal so it can be regulated.
February 14, 2003: Six-year-old Dolly is euthanized after suffering from advanced lung disease usually seen in animals twice her age.

What the headlines don’t tell us
Despite attention-grabbing headlines and photographs of Dolly the sheep and cloned cows, pigs, goats, and mice, a high percentage of animal clones are stillborn with monstrous abnormalities. Since cloned fetuses are commonly twice the size of normal ones, bloated mothers often have laborious miscarriages and occasionally die themselves. Most clones that survive at birth die before reaching maturity, or develop serious health problems later in life. (Dolly the sheep suffered from severe arthritis, which may or may not have been a result of her being a clone, and was euthanized in February 2003 due to progressive lung disease.) There’s no reason to believe that similar problems will not arise in the cloning of a human child.

Three biblical perspectives
Some things we don’t need to know. In the very beginning, Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, saying, “If you eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will be like gods!” (Genesis 3:1-6). To this day, that is still one of Satan’s most frequent and effective temptations. Science is sitting at the foot of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, plucking fruit. The trouble is, some of that fruit is good and some is bad, some is beneficial and some is diabolically harmful.
Just as the technological advances of the past few decades have brought us closer to the brink of self-destruction with “bigger and better” bombs, missiles, and other weapons of war, advances in the fields of genetic engineering and cloning are a two-edged sword: One edge promises better quality of life, but the other edge creates problems that neither science nor society is prepared to deal with.
Life and the Life-giver: “God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). In essence, proponents of cloning want to usurp God’s role and become creators and gods themselves, making offspring in their own images. We were created to love and respect our Creator, not to attempt to be creators ourselves. Those who would clone other humans are meddling in God’s business, but without His power and love. To think that they can improve on His design or plan is the ultimate in arrogance and audacity.
“God formed man … and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7 KJV). Only God has the right to create a new human soul, and only God has the power to grant eternal life. Life comes only from the Life-giver, and eternal life comes only through receiving Jesus as our Savior, not through attempts to immortalize ourselves by duplicating ourselves (John 3:16; 1:12, Revelation 3:20).
The Endtime connection: The Bible says that “in the Last Days perilous times shall come,” and that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” … “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:1,13,7 KJV). Each advance in cloning science takes us one step closer to becoming little gods and another step away from the truth of God.

            [Callout:] Genetic engineering and cloning are a two-edged sword: One edge promises better quality of life, but the other edge creates problems that neither science nor society is prepared to deal with.

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philosophies, and other false belief systems. They will gladly trade
their confusion and anxiety for your truth and peace.

So when you feel your faith is being attacked, keep your side of the conversation sweet, simple, and
personal. Tell whoever is attacking you, “Since I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I have found out that He really
is who the Bible says He is-and He is the only One who can make you or anyone else truly happy. If I had
found a cure for cancer or AIDS and didn’t tell anyone, if I kept it selfishly to myself, what would you think of
me? Well, I have discovered a cure for problems that affect billions more people than cancer or AIDS. I know
the cure for unhappiness, loneliness, rejection, and fear. If I didn’t share this cure with people, what would
you think of me?” Then you can tactfully challenge them. “Jesus is the cure-plain and simple! Don’t you
want to give Him a try?”

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My Special Creation
I remember when I formed you. With great care and special attention I handpicked each talent, each gift, each characteristic, each fiber of your being, until the combination and proportions were exactly right and each was perfectly in sync to accomplish My purpose.
I also remember the moment when I breathed into you the breath of life. Love welled up so intensely inside Me that I could not contain it, for I knew the joy you would bring to Me and those whose lives you would touch while on the great journey of life.
My eye has been on you from the very beginning. I have been with you every step of the way. I have watched you. I have loved you. I have cared for you. You have never been out of My sight.
I love you from everlasting to everlasting. Listen to My voice in your heart, and I will show you of My great, great love for you--love which is greater than the ocean, love which stretches further than the horizon, love which the whole universe with all its stars and galaxies cannot contain, love which stretches beyond understanding into infinity and eternity!