“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

Believe God’s Promises

“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).
“And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5).
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Accept Jesus Christ

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9, 10).

Experience Freedom From Sin

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

Become a New Person in Christ

“Repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20).
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Imagine the adjustment those parents must have had to make for their new son. How difficult to take the staring, questioning eyes wherever they took the boy. The couple made plans to have ears grafted on their son as soon as he was almost grown.

Donated ears were found for the young man. Parents, friends, and the young man were thrilled at the perfection of the operation. Thanks to the donor and the skills of modern science, gone was the stigma of deformity.

Some years later the mother of this family died of a fatal illness. As the grief-stricken family gathered around the coffin, the father pulled mother’s hair back from the sides of her face only to reveal no ears at all!

“Mother,” he explained, “donated those ears to her deformed son.”

Imagine the young man’s deep gratitude toward his mother. He no doubt loved her before—but now her memory would have added significance.

This is one of the most touching illustrations of a mother’s love I have ever heard. And what a beautiful picture of what self-sacrificial love is really like.

You could probably tell other stories of people who have even given their lives for someone else. We really admire such people. We give medals and honors to those who have, by their bravery and selflessness, risked their lives to save someone else from death or injury.

But all these acts of bravery seem almost insignificant in the light of one great act of sacrifice that happened almost 2,000 years ago!

This act was deeper and more inclusive than a mother’s love or a friend’s devotion. This one act of love was not just to save one person’s life. That act made possible the rescue of all humanity.

Like the dedicated mother, Jesus Christ came to give help to the needy. He did more than share ears, arms, or even a heart. He shared His life so that you and I could be spiritually sound and healthy.

Over and over, the Bible speaks of God’s love— His self-sacrificial—love to us. The most common comparison in the Bible is the love of a shepherd. Like a good mother or father the shepherd sacrifices almost anything, sometimes even his life, for the sheep.

We westerners have difficulty understanding just what kind of person a real shepherd is. Those of us who own sheep keep them fenced in, spending a minimum of time with them.

The eastern shepherd spends nearly all his time with his sheep, leading them to pasture and to drink. He protects them from wild animals and robbers. He may sometimes risk his life for the flock.

Jesus compared Himself to the shepherd when He said, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:14, 15).

At this time of year we especially remember that great sacrifice Christ made for us. Easter represents new life, hope, joy. But most importantly it stands for Christ’s blood-sacrifice on Calvary and His resurrection as victor over sin and death.

Christ would not have us look upon Him just as a good example, or only as a good man. He doesn’t want us just to admire His spirit of self-sacrifice. He wants us to serve Him with all our love and devotion.

He has given all for us now; He expects us to give all for Him.

The mother could have given her ears for her son without him ever having returned the love to her. Christ gave us His love, but His love can never help us unless we take it willingly and love Him in return. He said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23)

Let’s not just pause at the Cross, or at the empty tomb. Let’s not just stand marveling at the love and perfection of Christ. Let’s sacrifice ourselves anew to the One who made the greatest sacrifice of all times for us. “We love him because he first loved us.”

-by Roger L. Berry

An Answers in Genesis newsletter told of an airline pilot from Atlanta who found a sticker someone had placed in the front of a Gideon Bible placed in his Salt Lake City hotel room, carrying this disclaimer in a box:

This book contains religious stories regarding the origin of living things. The stories are theories, not facts. They are unproven, unprovable, and in some cases totally impossible. This material should be approached with an open mind, and a critical eye towards logic and believability.

Then there is the author who claims that the one absolute about students entering the universities is that they claim not to believe in absolutes. Accordingly, these students miss the truth which is the only foundation of learning, and mistake a few years in academic circles for an education.

Further, there is the twisted version of the life of Christ as portrayed in the Da Vinci Code, and even more recently in two books by aggressively atheistic authors. These have made it high on the best-seller lists.

We could rightly dwell on the moral degeneracy indicated by abortion. Recent figures go well over a staggering 40 million since 1973. A five-minute memorial service for each one would take over 228 years. Probably nothing would bring perspective more than if each abortion were suddenly also fatal to the mother.

And same-sex marriage? Homosexuality involves more than an ongoing decline of culture.

According to Scripture and the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, it denotes people whom God rejects, because they refuse the knowledge of the truth. This action of God is like a farmer rejecting a plot overgrown by briars and thistles.

While I am concerned for the culture, the greater concern is for the state of Christianity within the culture. Professing Christians have failed to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Sadly, the disclaimer in the Gideon Bible reflects not only the Spirit of the age, but also the theology of much of the church. Many church leaders have joined with evolutionists and atheists in discrediting the literal history of the Bible. Thus, it was inevitable that all miraculous events in Scripture would be disdained by elitist theologians. Finally, when people do not trust the Bible as being foundationally true, they also reject its moral authority.

Thus, the gleanings from many pulpits range from feeble attempts at old moral persuasions, to overt disdain for infallible truth and justification for every form of disobedience. Not surprisingly, the difference between Christian and non-Christian morals are hardly definable in many circles.

For most of the last century, culture has been the leader and the church has been the follower. I wasn’t around for all of that, but, in my estimation, the first things to happen were 1) ignoring the Biblical mandate for basic male-female roles in relation to headship, parenting, and responsibility, and 2) defying the purpose of clothing to modestly cover the human form in order to minimize sexual temptation. I remember the title of a booklet some years ago by the late Dr. John R. Rice entitled, Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers. Was Dr. Rice a bit uncouth with his approach? Possibly. Did he have a Biblical base for such a title? Absolutely! Yet I don’t know any popular evangelical leaders today who would touch such a subject.

I also remember an early 1900s church group photo with a notable sprinkling of head coverings (not hats) on the women reflecting belief in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16. A 1949 Billy Graham crusade picture from Los Angeles reveals a predominance of hats on the ladies. Even in the early 1970s, we had two widowed Catholic ladies next door who always veiled their heads when going to mass.

Reader, may I challenge you to connect the dots? Was the seed of today’s gay agenda not sown in the denial of the husband’s authority and the wife’s submission to that authority? What did we think would happen if we raised generations of children in blurred or even obliterated male-female distinctions? What do we expect when even Christian parents copy the cultural agenda with the same hairdos, jewelry, and clothing, and when men and women work the same professional or menial jobs and split domestic responsibility down the middle? Can we sow confusion without reaping the same? (See Ephesians 5:22-33 and 1 Corinthians 11:1-16.)

And then there is sexual morality. At the heart of an enduring culture is moral fidelity, yielding enduring marriage and family. Remember the old slogan? “The family that prays together stays together.” Christian faith was expected to produce “until-death-do-us-part” marriages. This is no longer true. Once the culture at large accepted no-stigma divorce and remarriage, churches and pastors got on the bandwagon. Further, if the numbers are correct, the “Christian” involvement in fornication and adultery (which includes divorce and remarriage), varies but little from the larger culture. By the way, of those 228 years of five-minute memorial services for the aborted, 45 years would be devoted to the castaways of evangelical Christian mothers who accept abortion.

Are you awake yet? Do you know the basic problem behind the morality picture? It is the allurement of indecent dress, and the filling the mind with immoral and unholy entertainment. Ever since sin came into the world, the female form on display is a drawing force on the male counterpart of sensual temptation. I cannot believe the way that professing Christian women join their lewd and lascivious counterparts in Tee shirts, plunging necklines, hiked hemlines, skin-tight jeans, and exposed midriffs. Thus, appearance that ought to be rated “for husband only,” is even coupled with bold demeanor and easy familiarity with men (a sure formula for moral failure).

If the evangelical quarter is serious about abstinence programs for singles and fidelity in marriage, nothing less than a return of reserve between the sexes, a complete wardrobe overhaul, and a change of entertainment venue is going to work.

Note what Billy Graham said in 1987. He recalled a sermon he had heard in 1948. I quote: “He (Donald Grey Barnhouse) preached one message on hell and another on separation from the world. I will never forget his message on separation from the world. We have gotten away from that. We have moved in with the world and allowed the world to penetrate the way we live. So the things we used to call sin are no longer sin. Things that we would have abhorred a few years ago, we accept as matter of fact today, not realizing that they offend a holy God.” In the same sermon, he lamented the way God’s name is taken in vain in the entertainment industry and said that it is “almost embarrassing to turn on the television set.” Further, he stated, “We do not realize how this offends a holy and righteous God. We act as though it doesn’t really matter what we think or say because we think God will forgive us anyway.” (See I Thessalonians 4:1-6, 1 Peter 3:1-4, 1 Timothy 2:9, and 2 Corinthians 6.14-18.)

Would we really trade the legacy of righteousness, peace, and joy in God, to cast our lot with the darkness and judgment of the world? The joy of living within the will of God by the Spirit-filled life is the only way that brings peace and satisfaction.

Part Two

-by Lester Troyer

It was hard to believe but there I was on a cold, sunny afternoon in October, cleaning off the fossil bones of a duckbilled dinosaur on an Alberta hillside along the Bow River.

I had flown into Alberta from Pennsylvania a few days earlier. As we flew to our landing at Calgary, I looked down at the flat Alberta plains and pondered the interesting geology in this part of God’s earth.

Alberta Geography

My daughter and son-in-law live in southeastern Alberta where the land is semi-arid and normally gets less than 10 inches of rainfall a year. However, the land is flat enough that in the 1920s thousands of acres were graded, using horses and scrapers, for flood irrigation. The soil is made up of fine, dense sediments. When it is wet, it is a pasty muck that builds up on boots. These fine sediments evidently settled out when floodwaters became still, near the end of the worldwide deluge described in Genesis 6-8.

Alberta Geology

The layered sediments below these flat Alberta plains contain numberless fossil remains of plants and animals. Ground water is not fit for drinking because of the oil, gas, and coal (fossil fuels) contained in thousands of feet of sedimentary flood layers. In our stressed Pennsylvania coal region, these layers are compressed, wrapped, and stood up past vertical (90 degrees) at places. However, in the Alberta prairie, the sedimentary layers remain close to the flat gravitational plane in which they were deposited.

The contents of these layers have been exposed to our view today by the Red Deer River. It has cut a canyon across the Alberta plains over a mile wide and 4,000 feet deep. Much of the layered deposits are bentonite soil. Bentonite is a gray clay of volcanic ash origin that swells to twice its size when wet. It shrivels and crumbles up like popcorn on the surface when it dries out. This is some of the worldwide evidence that there was also extensive volcanic action when “all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up” in Genesis 7:11. The creatures in this area may have suffocated in ash instead of drowning.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller in the Red Deer River Valley has one of the best collections of dinosaurs in the world. Here many dinosaur skeletons have been reconstructed along with displays of the mammals, plants, and marine life that have been found with them. Over 300 museum-quality dinosaur skeletons have been found along the Red Deer River. At Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, a few skeletons of dinosaurs have been simply cleaned off and a shelter with windows built over the site for people to view them.

Finding a Dinosaur

One day, my son-in-law, Kevin, asked if I wanted to go out along the Bow River to look for some bones some young people had seen on a hike. With my interest in fossils, I readily agreed. So we packed lunch for the family and all headed south to some eroded hills along the Bow River. We soon were walking over hills and gullies with holes and subterranean passages. It was the same volcanic bentonite soil with some hoodoos (pillars with a hard flat rack on top that prevented erosion) as is found in the Red Deer River Valley.

We found the hill we were looking for which had about a 60-foot drop-off on one side to the Bow River. We searched around the top and suddenly we saw it. A piece of white bone about one inch long was exposed on the side of the hill near the top. I cleaned around it and immediately contacted another bone surface.

We decided to go down to the van and eat lunch. Our plan was for Kevin to take the family back and get some pans and tools while I stayed and worked at the site. Thus, I spent the pleasant afternoon alone, carefully cleaning away the soil as more and more bones were exposed.

We also found a few pieces of bone lying around loose on the surface. A bone about a foot long was embedded in the surface about 15 feet to the right but too close to the edge of the cliff to reach. When Kevin came back towards evening, we collected two vertebra and parts of three ribs plus a seven-inch bone along one of the vertebra. We also saw a flat bone surface the size of a hand exposed when we left. Definitely, there was something bigger behind it.

The bones were fractured in 1-2 inch pieces. We worked till 11:00 that night gluing pieces together until our glue ran out. On Monday, we called and talked to the senior scientist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller who said he would look at the bones. When we got to the museum he immediately set the seven-inch bone on top of a round vertebra and said, “This is a caudal vertebra of a hadrosaur” (caudal refers to the tail). After some discussion of where the site was, he also said he must keep the bones. He said they often find fossils through other people like us. However, there is a law against excavating fossils in Alberta. (He noted they had not found much along the Bow River and will likely be interested in digging the site.) He has since been communicating with the organization controlling the grazing land where the hadrosaur was found.

Hadrosaurs

Hadrosaurs are the most plentiful kind found in the fossil record. Adults were 2-5 tons and up to 33 feet long. They had duckbills and webbed feet and evidently worked the lakes and streams of the early world. A flatter world with a land-water mix is indicated in 2 Peter 3:5, 6. “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” The catastrophic geologic forces at work in the flood year pushed up the high mountains that we see today (Psalm 104:5-9). After the Flood, the climate produced adverse extremes of heat and cold, stressing large reptile creatures.

The names of some dinosaurs, Albertosaur and Edmontosaur (for the city of Edmonton) show how Alberta and the western United States are major dinosaur locations. Duckbill dinosaurs have been found at places here in all stages of growth from eggs (with embryos) to adults. Nesting sites like this indicate they took care of their young. It was astounding to touch the remains of animals that perished in the flood event. These ribs and vertebra were once living parts of a creature ranging in the pre-flood world.

Interpretations of Facts

We walked through the museum at Drumheller and took pictures of some hadrosaur skeletons showing vertebra and ribs like those we had found. A suggestion box was mounted on the wall at the desk of the museum. “You help us evolve” was written over a silhouette of Darwin’s head. Really! Did the amazing displays of dinosaurs and their environment at the museum happen by accident without any intelligent input! Even a child, if he is encouraged to think, knows better. In a discussion with one of the museum personnel, we told her we don’t have the faith to believe that all the complex biologic diversity of our world, self-organized from inorganic minerals. There are billions of bits of ordered genetic information on the genome of each plant and animal. God is the author of these genetic codes (Psalm 139:13-16).

Despite their best efforts to convince people of evolution by random processes, the museums themselves are evidence against accidental evolution and evidence for a Designer. God’s creation is much more intricate than anything man has ever made. Evolution is an impossible, unscientific belief system. “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20).

-by Elvin Stauffer

But God has addressed His messages to us earth-dwellers out of a heart of love. And He wants to form such a heart of love within us! So He tells us what and whom to love, and how. He also tells us what and what not to love.

Almost 3000 years ago God said, “Hate the evil, and love the good” (Amos 5:15).

When God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to share the life of us earth-dwellers, He sent many messages about love. Jesus showed that genuine love is expressed in obedience. “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23). Now it is not so hard to love the lovely, or those who love us. But Jesus says, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?” (Matthew 5:44-46).

Love of self must not crowd out love for others. The neighbor will taste the flavor of your religion by your love. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:9, 10).

A special, divine love flows between Christians who are to regard one another as brethren of a common holy Father. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). This love is purified of carnal, lustful elements and self-seeking.

“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again” (1 Peter 1:22, 23). It is not “put on” as a politeness or device. It is wholly refined of God.

Not only in and through all, but also over and above all must be the love reserved for God alone. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39). Such pure, wholehearted love as God requires cannot live in the same life with forbidden loves. Even legitimate things become forbidden when they interfere with devotion to God. One of these is the love of money: “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

The all-inclusive message God has for us concerning forbidden loves is found in 1 John 2:15-17: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

When you think about it, isn’t most of today’s advertising calculated to arouse love of the world and the things in the world? The heart must be weaned away from the world, become “dead” unto sin, and “alive” unto God. These words from God speak plainly and painfully. Read them over and over. Measure yourself by them. Let them “sink down in your ears.” Let God deliver you from the bondage of fashion, culture, pleasure, ease, prosperity, self. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

-by Harold Brenneman