Test the Ice
My brother and I wanted to play hockey on the frozen lake. We believed that the ice was thick enough, the temperature was well below freezing for several days. So we began to crawl slowly on the ice to make sure what we believed was true.
As we went out further and further, a truck pulling a trailer with an ice fishing hut drove right passed us. As soon as we saw that, we jumped up with greater confidence and played hockey all day!
As we look around the universe, we see God's creation and other evidence which build our faith. As we continue to search, we find more and more evidence. Eventually, our faith grows stronger. We test the ice, and find that Christ is a firm foundation.
Faith is NOT blind faith. Seek and you will find! Faith affirming evidence is all around you!
"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11: 1-3, ESV). Hebrews 11:1-3
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse" (Romans 1:20, ESV).
Perfect Puffer Fish Creation Points to a Perfect Creator
The inconspicuous, boring looking little Puffer Fish is perhaps nature’s greatest artist. “To grab a female's attention," reports BBC Earth, "he creates something that almost defies belief.”
With only his fins as tools, he “plows the sand” on the ocean floor with “mathematical perfection,” creating an artistic masterpiece to entice and impress potential mates.
BBC Earth concludes, "Nowhere else in nature does an animal create something as complex and perfect as this. If this doesn't get him noticed, nothing will."
Click here to watch a video of this awe-inspiring artistry.
Complexity and perfection in nature shouldn’t "defy belief," as this narrator suggests. Rather these marks of "mathematical perfection," intellegence, and design should drive us to an unequivocal belief in the Creator behind all this beauty, complexity, and perfection.
Truly, how can one see this and NOT see God?! To paraphrase the words of the narrator, "If this doesn't get God noticed, nothing will."
Yet people look at the amazing creation all around them, refusing to see God in it. In so doing, the book of Romans condemns them as “supressing the truth in unrighteousness."
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse" (Romans 1:18-20, NIV).
This is true throughout all of creation.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" (Psalm 19:1-4, NIV).
Don't slience the voice of all creation ... Worship and serve the Creator!
The Mystery of Mystery Hill
Want to see water flow uphill, balls roll up a ramp, or watch a swing sway in perpetual motion? Well come on down to Mystery Hill in Blowing Rock, NC. It claims to be the only site in NC, and one of a handful in the entire USA, that sits atop a bona fide “natural gravitational anomaly.”
Discovered in the 1920s in the Historic Hudson Apple Orchards the only known gravitational anomaly in the state has been amazing visitors from around the world since it was opened to the public in 1948. On a fun and educational guided tour, your family will learn the history of the discovery of this natural wonder and get to try their hand with many demonstrations of how gravity behaves differently in this one section of the historic orchards. Tours start several times an hour and guests get time to explore and experiment on their own after the tour. -- from "About" Mystery Hill
Visitors enter a room that appears to be level, but immediately upon entering, are propelled seemingly “downhill” toward the opposite wall. Balls placed on a track with an apparent 20-30 degree upward grade appear to roll up the track. Water poured into a bucket at the lower base of a pipe running 20-30 degrees below a faucet appears to flow up the pipe and out the faucet above. Children can sit upon a swing and push back only to have it swing forward and stop at a right angle to the ground, before swinging back again with no effort.
Visitors listen in amazement as the tour guide explains that the room they are in sits atop a gravitational vortex – an area of highly dense metal ore buried deep in the heart of the mountain beneath them, which causes gravity to work in contradiction to the laws of nature.
It’s all quite impressive, quite fascinating, mesmerizing, and honestly, utterly disorienting.
But is it real? Well, it’s certainly rooted, in some measure, to a known geological phenomenon of high-density metal ore buried deep beneath the site of the old orchard.
Simply using the level app on your iPhone will reveal that the ascending track on which the balls roled up is actually running a few, subtle degrees below level. In other words, both the track and the pipe were actually slanted just very slightly downhill. Fixtures, furnishing, trims, etc. were all meticulously designed to use optical illusion to disorient and deceive.
Visitors to Mystery Hill are asked to believe a story that contradicts an established law of science. The lesson is that when given a choice between a law of nature and a story that contradicts a law of nature, we should always choose the law of nature.
The theory of evolution presents us with a similar dilemma. As the story goes, for millions of years, early humans have evolved to become an increasingly more advanced species. The problem with this story is that it contradicts an established law of science, namely, the second law of thermodynamics, which tells us that entropy (our current trajectory toward total disorder) will never decrease. Given the choice between a law of nature and a story, which will you choose?