Inspired by Greatness

This morning I found this Scripture being quoted by one of my friends on facebook:

"Let them praise the name of the Lord for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up for His people a horn, the praise of all His saints." Psalm 148:13-14

It reminded me of one other verse that always leaves me breathless when I consider it.  Isaiah 40:12a says: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?" 

If you stretch out the fingers of your hand as far as they will go and measure from the end of your thumb to the end of your little finger, that is the span or breadth of your hand. 

God holds the universe in the span of His hand.  Just think about THAT for a minute and see if your perspective on God doesn't change for the larger.

Psalm 8 goes on to add:

3When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

4what is man that you are mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him?

How God could even find us in such a vast expanse is incredible!  That He would be willing to come down to be with us is even more amazing. 

We see this skit in church every so often.  I'm going to add the link to it so you can enjoy it too. 

http://www.sermonspice.com/product/38133/the-birdcage

God bless us all,

Kathi

Dragons

Where does the idea or the prototype of a dragon come from?  Almost every culture has a dragon or flying serpent in its mythology.  I can think of two ways it could have come about.

The Bible says that Noah took two of every kind of animal with him on the ark (and seven each of clean animals).  Since he took two of EVERY kind, that would include dinosaurs - albeit they would have had to be young ones to fit on the ark. (Gen. 7:2-3)

All kinds of land animals were created on the sixth day.  Dinosaurs, many of them, were land animals.  Before the Flood, people only ate vegetation as far as we know. In Genesis 1:29-30, God tells Adam and Eve they may eat every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seeds in it. (By the way, all of the animals were also created to eat plants.  See v. 30)

It is possible that as people discovered more and more ways to disobey God, that they began eating animals and that the dinosaurs were hunted to extinction before the Flood.  I cannot prove that one way or another.  But assuming some were alive when Noah constructed the ark, then there were dinosaurs aboard it when the rains began to fall.

After the Flood, the earth was substantially different.  There were annual seasons instead of a uniformly warm planet.  (See studies done in the Antarctic that prove it was once warm and lush. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/03/from-leafy-to-lifeless-tropical-rainforest-once-covered-antarctica/ )
Certainly that would have affected the lifespan and size of the great lizards, but they might have continued to exist for some centuries past the Flood.  Stories like St. George and the Dragon lend some credence to this idea. Also explorers to the Dakotas claim to have seen flying lizards.  The Native Americans there called it a thunderbird.

Another possible origin for dragons would also begin in the Garden of Eden.  The talking snake that discussed eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was not shaped like our modern snakes.  When God cursed the snake, He said it would crawl on its belly and eat dust all of its life.  That wouldn't have been much of a curse unless the snake hadn't crawled before the curse was given.  So I pose the question, what was the snake's mode of getting around before he landed on his belly?  Legs almost certainly.  Even today, pythons and boas have vestigial legs.  That would make the curse even worse, to still have a reminder of what once was.  (Gen. 3:14)

So snakes had legs in the beginning.  What if that wasn't all?  What if they also had wings and could fly? 

No one doubts flying lizards (see the aforementioned pterodactyls and pterodons).  There is a species of snake in South America that leaps from tree branches, flattens out its body, and glides on the air for some distance.  http://www.flyingsnake.org/    South American mythology has an important god named Queztalcoatl or Plumed Serpent.  The idea of flying snakes had to begin somewhere - and some snakes seem to remember that they were once allowed to fly.

Take your pick of the choices, but I have to lean in favor of the snake in the Garden of Eden.  All the other references to dragons in the Bible link the name Dragon to Satan. (Rev. 12:13-17 and, just in case that doesn't do it for you, see Rev. 20:2)

Go with God.

Kathi

Attention, Please

If God were trying to get our attention, what would He use to do it?

In the Old Testament, He used drought, famine, and enemy attacks to get the Israelites to come back to their true God.  Israel was famous for abandoning their Glory for gods that demanded even as much as the life of their babies.  And God had to repeatedly use extreme measures to get their attention.

As He says, "Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!" Jer. 2:11

America began as a Christian country.  There have been a number of revivals along the way which kept God in the forefront of our nation's thoughts and policies.  In the 1960's, America kicked God out of school and allowed our unborn babies to be offered up to the god of convenience. 

Since then, I have seen in my lifetime the weather become more extreme, progressively become more severe.  There are earthquakes in unusual places with bigger earthquakes in places that often have them.  Now drought - and accompanying food shortages - are coupled with a crushed economy.  We are at the mercy of foreign nations (See Ezekiel 7:21 and Hosea 8:7) for energy.  I've heard that most of Nevada is owned by people from other countries.  That is not considered to be a blessing according to God's Word.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour. Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up."  Hosea 8:7  Here is both drought and foreign occupation.  Even if foreigners were not to literally take over the country, we are so in debt to other governments that everything we produce is owed to someone else.

We've been attacked at our embassies outside of the country and internally as well. 

I see the nation's economy being manipulated in such a way that our finances will utterly fail and the only way to redeem it will be to come up with a new currency and probably to join a one-world government.  Our country's economic situation is no accident. 

I can only see two ways of looking at this.  Either God is trying to get our attention and call us back to Himself, or we are on the edge of the end-times. 

Show me, if you can, where I'm wrong.

God go with you,

Kathi