Smile on the dial of the crocodile

 Meet ‘Stumpy’ the salt-water crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) who thoroughly enjoys the good life with Chris Peberdy’s family at Howard Springs near Darwin N.T. 

She gets to swim in the family pool, wallow in the spa, chomp on chicken wings at barbeques and even pose in wedding photos. A tickle on the neck quickly puts a smile on her dial when you would expect to lose a finger or three.

Chris is a reptile wrangler contracted by the Northern Territory government and has his own theory on Stumpy’s friendly disposition…

“Something has undone millions of years of evolution with this animal.”

…except Chris is forgetting one thing – our Creator God who said to Noah after the Great Flood: “…the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth…”

So will animals always have this fear of man while preying on each other?

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them…” Isaiah 11

So what else puts a smile on the dial of a crocodile? Hatchlings of course!                          

Is there anything we could learn from the crocodile?...like, protecting our children from evil?                                            

Acknowledgements: Ross Bilton, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 30 Nov 2013                                                           

Photo credits:

Stumpy / Nathan Dyer

Hatchling / thesun.co.uk

Hope springs eternal

Following our star show:  Somethin' fishy……
http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/something-fishy.html

 

Andromeda galaxy

Okay Grandad, what was that fishy star show in November all about?                  
Does it tell us any more of the gospel about Jesus?

First of all, can you remember where we got up to in the story, back in July?

Mary's special Son paid our penalty with His blood by dying for us …..but it looked like the baddies had won.

Ah!...we need to know if that sacrifice was a tragic defeat or a victorious achievement. Well like I told you, Capricornus may be a dying goat struggling to get up but remember its fishy tail is very much alive...

...so life is going to come out of death after all, hey?

Yep!  Now these constellations may have been especially intended for God's earthly people, Israel, so let me tell you about goat sacrifices in the Bible. A goat was sacrificed for the ‘sin offering’ and two goats were used on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement, when one was sacrificed and the other was released into the desert – one died but one lived. Can you think of any more examples in the Bible?

Joseph's big brothers dipped his fancy jacket in the blood of a kid goat so their dad would think he had been killed by a wild animal.

How heartless that was!...but in the end Joseph could say:                            
"you meant it for evil against me; but God meant it for good..."                             
The baddies aren't going to win after all.

Just as well!  The next one was Aquarius pouring out all that water for the fish.

Yes and remember fish were the first animals God made, they weren't in Noah's ark but lived thru the great flood and they're always there for the eating - if we can catch them!  
So what can you tell me about water?

We use it for washing but we really can't survive without water - it's like the fuel of life. I think Jesus said: "come to me and drink" and then water came out of His side when He died.

There you are...life out of death!..."a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life". Of course water features many times: the Rock in the desert, the Red Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan river, Jesus walking on water....

…and Peter nearly drowning!  
The fish aren't watered in Pisces - they're trapped by this monster.

Well, the Israel people found out what it’s like to be trapped by the monster - 70 years captivity for Judah in Babylon and finally ‘scattered among all peoples’ just as Moses warned. Amos even warned Israel they would be taken away with fish-hooks and sure enough, that's how Assyrians controlled their prisoners - joined together using fish-hooks through their noses.

Ouch!  Too bad if someone fell over or needed to go to the toilet!

That for sure.  Finally there is Aries the ram…so what does that remind you of?

Lots of stories – Abel, Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah, the Passover…

… a lamb was sacrificed at the temple every morning and evening and remember what John the Baptist called Jesus: “Look! the Lamb of God!”

There might be life out of death but with a dying goat, hooked fish, and a sacrificed lamb, where’s ‘Hope’ come into it?

The apostle John sobbed over nobody being found worthy to open the Revelation until ‘The Lamb’ came along – the Lion of the tribe of Judah.               

See the bright link in Andromeda's chain?

Not only that, associated with these 4 constellations is another: the princess Andromeda in the north, chained to a rock. Can you see the beautiful Andromeda nebula is the bright link in her ugly chain, Andromeda also being the name of the spiral galaxy closest to the Milky Way….even visible to the naked eye!
I wonder if that’s meant to be a sign of hope? 
Like Jeremiah said long ago: “Therefore I hope in Him!”    

Yeah, I wonder…..  Thanks, Grandad. It must be nearly time to look for the last 4 constellations, hey?                                             

                                               

Image credits:                                                                                  

Andromeda / Rogelio Bernal Andreo / deepskycolours.com                                                   

Stellarium

Tribute to Zac Young

In among our IOPNA's let's have a tribute to my 19 year old friend, Zac Young, who tragically died yesterday (Saturday 30th) on a beach at Coffs Harbour, NSW, after being mauled by a shark while body-boarding.

I met Zac for the first and only time on Wednesday at a Youth for Christ seminar for years 9 & 10 at Westport High School, Port Macquarie. As a local YFC intern he was boldly sharing with current students that Jesus Christ had turned his life around and later he told me his story...

Not one for tears, it all came undone for Zac after a wild party when he fell to his knees in the shower and sobbed, begging God to forgive him. Realizing that only God could have done this he then dedicated the rest of his (short) life to serving our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He later gave testimony in a local church, predicting it may need a tragedy to occur for us to wake up and get real about this 'Jesus business'.

Farewell Zac. We will miss you but we know you are in safe hands and your death will not be in vain after touching so many lives in your brief Christian walk.                 
You're a hard act to follow, mate!

 

Acknowledgements: theaustralian.com.au

 

Somethin' fishy

Somethin' fishy

Back in July we took the kids stargazing:
"Camping with the grandkids"
"Brekkie 'round the campfire"
"Grandkids find a scorpion" ...plus
"Born to die"
...and saw the constellations Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius.   

Grandad you promised to show us more stars in October but now it's November!

Not to worry. At least we won't have to wait up so late but we are going to have to get well away from any lights because the next four constellations are quite hard to see.....a bit of mystery in the sky really! Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces and Aries…even their names sound a bit mysterious, hey!

Well the first one might have something to do with the Tropic of Capricorn that I learnt about in school, and Aquarius sounds a bit like water. I haven't got a clue about the next two.

I hope you brought our special red torch and star map along. Let's lie down here and look straight up at that brilliant star above us - Fomalhaut.

Fomalhaut??...whatever does that mean?
That's Arabic for 'mouth of the fish' - in Piscis Austrinus or ‘southern fish’.
Now look down there towards our north-western horizon and we find the star Altair in Aquila the eagle.

Huh?...I can't see any fish - or any eagle!

Nevermind. What we're looking for is an upside-down goat between them.

A goat now??

Yep, a dying goat with a fishy tail!....called Capricornus or horned goat. If you look very carefully you'll see some faint stars in pairs: 2 towards the north-west are on its horns, 2 towards the south are on its foreleg and the last 2 are on its fishy tail.

How do you know it's dying Grandad?...you used to have goats didn't you?

Healthy goats use their hind legs first to get up, not their front legs.                       
Now then, when the Sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, the southern limit of the tropics, on...

...I know, the 22nd of December...just before Christmas…

...yes, the Sun used to be in front of Capricornus then - it's running about a month late these days. Now moving toward the east you can see 2 bright stars near each other, on the shoulders of Aquarius who also looks upside down to us....

...let me guess – pouring water!

...yes, out of his flask where those 3 little stars are together in a curve. The water is splashing in front of the fish where there's a sprinkling of stars just east of Fomalhaut.    

Now, can you see a faint ‘V’ of stars east of Aquarius? This has the Latin name of Pisces, because there are 2 more fish, tied by a band on the monster Cetus. His tail is marked by the star Diphda, high up in our northern sky.

This is all very fishy!  That leaves Aries - what does that mean Grandad?

Aries is Latin for 'ram' and there he is - upside down again - north-east of Pisces. The bright star is Hamal on his back and the two close together mark his eyes.

These constellations are sure hard to see and their meaning must be a bit of a mystery too….mmm…fishy-goat, water for a fish, more fish, and then a ram.  

Let’s keep that for tomorrow, hey Grandad.

NEXT:  Hope springs eternal

http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/hope-springs-eternal.html

Image credit: Stellarium

 

 

 

#3. A GERMAN JEW??

Continuing on from: “Don’t take the Bible literally”… we thought we lived at the centre of our solar system, even the centre of the universe, until 5 European scientists came along and spoilt that by unwittingly challenging the Bible, then…

 

Just when virtually everybody had accepted the Sun being the centre of our solar system (and the notion that the Earth must be millions of years old), we’re watching the German Nazis rid the world of those ‘embarrassing’ Jews - the writers of the Bible that contradicts those ideas!                                                         

Meanwhile, a German Jew of all people – the genius Albert Einstein (1879–1955) - comes up with his profound theories of Relativity showing that all position and movement in the universe is RELATIVE - so it is not actually wrong to say our solar system is ‘geocentric’, after all!                                                        

 

(He also said: “Time is an illusion”…try that one on a parking officer!)                           

Fortunately for scientists and educators with an atheistic agenda, us lesser mortals can’t get our heads around Albert Einstein’s astrophysics, so don’t hold your breath waiting for the textbooks to be changed any time soon.                                  

Oh and by the way, guess who still use both heliocentric AND geocentric phenomena?
Astronomers of course!

-  geocentric positioning is used for observation, teaching, navigation, radio-telescopes and planetariums

-     there is no observational difference between the heliocentric and geocentric models – they both predict identical planetary movements

-     the sun is not actually centred on the geometric ‘barycentre’ of any planet’s orbit and is not centred on the centre of gravity of the solar system

…you still don’t get it??                                                              

We live in a vast environment where position and movement is RELATIVE. Here on Earth, anytime we talk about sunrise, time of day or night, sunset, planets rising and setting….we are using the Earth as our reference - not the Sun.  We are talking ‘geocentric’!   

When the astronauts stood on the Moon, that was their reference – not the Earth or the Sun, which both seemed to rise and set while orbiting the Moon. Why not check with an Apollo astronaut who’s been there? For them the Moon was the centre of the solar system (even the universe) – they were ‘lunarcentric’ - until they decided Earth was a more attractive option and headed for home.                                                   

What do you think?  Was Galileo closer to being right after all? (as usual!)…trying to have it both ways.

What about that Bible that is supposed to contradict Science?.....not so stupid after all??

Acknowledgements:                                                                            
wikipedia.org                                                                                      
scienceblogs.com                                                                                              
iskcondesiretree.net                                                                             
universetoday.com

Image credits: karmajello.com                                                          

 

 

#2. "DON'T TAKE THE BIBLE LITERALLY??"

Continuing on from the post: "GOLDILOCKS ZONE - Just right!"...Earth is definitely in the Goldilocks Zone – just right!...but is it centre-stage?

 

Let’s meet those 5 scientists from Poland, Denmark, Germany, Italy and England…...Nick, Tyco, Joe, Leo and ‘Zac’:

Nicholaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and finally Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)….and whada ya know!... all Christians, telling us the Earth is not really centre-stage after all!    

Nick put the sun at the centre, Tycho half agreed, Joe did the maths, and Isaac laid down the Law (of Universal Gravitation).  

What about Galileo?  He tried to have it both ways, only to finish up under house arrest by Pope Urban VIII for 8 years - let’s come back to him later.                         
Hang on a minute…if these guys were Christians, how did they match their ‘heliocentric’ idea with their sacred book, the Bible?...

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”                         Genesis 1:1…before the sun on Day 4!  (verse 16)

“Who layeth the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.”      Psalm 104:5

 “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool…”  Isaiah 66:1

 “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in…”   Isaiah 40:22

Mmm…that puts Earth centre-stage with God claiming it as headquarters by either sitting on the Earth or resting his feet on it!  What about the sun?

“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.”    Ecclesiastes 1:5

 “In them (heavens) hath he set a tabernacle for the sun…his going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuits unto the ends of it…” Psalm 19

“And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies….so the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”            Joshua 10:13

…and don’t forget 2 Kings 20 & Isaiah 38 where the shadow of the sun on the dial of Ahaz went BACK 10 degrees!                                                   

So according to the Bible, the sun is going around a circuit when it’s not stopped or going backwards!   
"Hohoho!…how are you Christians going to explain that one, hey??"                            

“Oh that’s just how it appeared in those days.”    
“You can’t read the Bible literally…they’re just figures of speech.”        

Well is that just a cop-out or what? 
Here’s the problem:                                                            
It looks like Science proved centuries ago that the Bible can’t be relied on when it comes to anything scientific - thanks to Christians even!                                  
So can the Bible be relied on at all??

NEXT:  A German Jew??

http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/a-german-jew.html

 

 

Image credit: heavenlyfragrance.blogspot.com

#1 GOLDILOCKS ZONE - just right!

Are you broadminded?...can you think outside the square?...even if your long-held beliefs get tipped on their head?                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                    

We have all been brilliantly indoctrinated by scientists and educators that, even though nowhere else in the universe is known to be habitable, Planet Earth is just an insignificant speck in a vast cosmic universe of galaxies - not even at the centre of our own solar system.... yes?.... and they tell us it all started with the ‘Big Bang’.                 

How did the stuff that went BANG exist in the first place?    Don't ask.            

Also, don't ask about how come Mercury's orbit/rotation is synchronised, or how come Venus has a retro-rotation AND is synchronised with Earth, or why we find ourselves in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ (just right) with our Moon also perfectly positioned, or why Mars is right where it should be, or about Jupiter's energy, or Saturn's incredible moons, or why Uranus rolls along like a ball, or how Neptune even exists, or why Pluto is still very much alive, or where comets come from……

So all this incredible design came about from an uncontrolled chance explosion??                 

In fact, scientists are now quietly admitting that the Big Bang theory is looking a bit dodgy .....but of course, don't bother changing the textbooks in the schools just yet.

So, is our solar system heliocentric?.......or geocentric?                                    
In other words: is the Sun really the centre of our solar system?……..or is Earth?
Yep!...does the Earth orbit the Sun?…or is it the other way around?                      
(Hey this guy has really lost his marbles!)

                              
Being a pilot, let me assure you that once you’re airborne, time becomes relative – it can be local time, or ‘Zulu time’ at Greenwich, or destination time, or flight time, or dinner time, or time to go to the loo!                                                           
But which way is up?….or where is north?  You’d better hurry up and find out!

Now you’ve graduated as an astronaut doing some extra-vehicular activity (space-walking) and time is not relative now - it’s meaningless. 

Who cares what time it is in Houston?...as long as your oxygen holds out.   

Which way is up?  Where’s north?  

Is Australia down-under or on-top?  

Where is your reference point now?   

“Huh?  Earth, I suppose!”                                          

See…the position and movement of everything out here is….RELATIVE. (Get that?)                      

So let’s look at how the world’s great thinkers in the past saw it….

For thousands of years Man has watched the sun and moon tracking across the sky as they appeared to orbit around the Earth. Five ‘stars’ scored the Greek name planetes because they appeared to also wander along this line although sometimes moving in reverse, yes: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

In November 2012, five of them lined up like ducks for Cairns, Queensland – all except Mars and Jupiter.               

Cairns saw 5 planets in a row!

In the 3^rd Century BC, Aristarchus of Samos failed to convince us that the sun was the centre of the action; the Earth-centred Almagest proposed by Claudius Ptolemaeus (90-168 AD) of Alexandria, Egypt seemed to make more sense – for 1400 years – until, instead of 5 planets, 5 European scientists wander along:
Nick, Tyco, Joe, Leo and Zac.  
Which one will get it right?    




NEXT: “Don’t take the Bible literally”  

http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/dont-take-bible-literally.html

Image credits:

readfitness.com   

asc.csa.gc.ca 

Stellarium

    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Stellarium