I don't know about you, but this sure makes me proud to be an American! 

Hitting an object the size of a school bus, which is moving @ 17,000 mph while orbiting the earth, with a missile launched from a ship in the North Pacific, from 130 miles away?  This is absolutely amazing!

Throughout the years, I've known a lot of guys who work in the defense/aerospace industry.  You guys should all take pride in this one.

Click here: Navy Scores Direct Hit on Spy Satellite

I wish you and yours a very blessed, healthy, and prosperous New Year!
 

The Mormon PR machine is really cranking it out these days.  After the recent Huckabee/Romney dust-up over Mormon doctrine (doesn't Mormonism teach that Jesus and Satan were spirit brothers?), Fox News put a series of questions to LDS church officials about Mormon doctrine.  Planet Kolob . . .  The deity of Jesus. . .  Does God really have a body?  Temple marriage. . .  Temple garments . . .  The whole nine yards.

In answering these questions, LDS officials evaded, dodged, and obfuscated.  Read it for yourself.  Click here: FOXNews.com - 21 Questions Answered About Mormon Faith - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

Rob Bowman goes through these 21 questions and Mormon "answers" point by point with a helpful commentary.  Click here: Parchment and Pen » Straight Answers to Fox’s 21 Questions about the Mormon Church

Despite all LDS protests to the contrary, the Mormon Church is a heretical sect.  Far and away, the best book I have read on the topic is Richard Ostling's Mormon America. Click here: Amazon.com: Mormon America: The Power and the Promise: Books: Richard Ostling,Joan K. Ostling

Many of you have emailed me asking about the fires spreading throughout much of So Cal.  So, here's the latest from the local OPC diaconal committee who have done yeoman's work in keeping everyone informed.

As for me and my house, we are in the northwest part of Orange County, well away from the fires--although with all the ash falling, I feel like I'm living in Pompeii.  Several of our church families live near the fire in south Orange County (the Santiago Fire), but to my knowledge, no one has been displaced.

But its a different story in northern San Diego County about 75 miles to the south of Christ Reformed.  The "Witch" fire burned very close to Westminster Seminary--at last report there were a few singed trees toward the back of the campus (if you've been there), but no damage to the campus itself.  Some of those professors who live near the seminary (the Hortons, the Strimples, the Van Drunens) were evacuated.  The Clarks were OK at last report--the Baughs were staying with them (having been evacuated from further out).  Those professors living in the northern part of town, were not evacuated.  As best as I can tell, the fire burned through the southeastern part of Escondido yesterday afternoon heading south to Rancho Bernardo, where so much damage was done.  The winds which, thankfully, are dying down, can cause burned areas to flare up again.  Once that fear is over, my guess is that the evacuees will be allowed home.

There are many URC, OPC and PCA churches and their members in San Diego County directly effected by this.  The siutation is quite fluid and all depends upon the winds.  Pray that the winds die down, and for the exhausted firefighters who are giving it their all.

At least governor Arnold didn't come out and announce in his thick accent, "Kalifornia is on fire," like he did last time.

Rather than write my own post on the Yankees' failure to resign Joe Torre, here's a link to an essay with which I whole heartedly concur.  Click here: SI.com - Writers - Jon Heyman: Despite fair offer, Torre knew it was time to go - Thursday October 18, 2007 9:03PM

I am an avid Civil War buff, so when Allen Guelzo (author of a great book on Lincoln, Redeemer President) offers his list of the five best books on the Civil War, you can bet I'll check it out.  I guess I'll need to get out my credit card, since I don't own any of them!  Click here: My Top 5 Books on the Civil War | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

I was encouraged when I saw this header:  Willow Creek Repents?  (Click here: Willow Creek Repents...)  But alas, it is not all good news.  As Scott Clark points out, it is one thing to repent of what doesn't work, it is quite another to do what is biblical (Click here: http://www.oceansideurc.org/ - The Heidelblog (Scott Clark) - - Was the Program-Driven Church A Mistake?)

I'm not going to touch this one with a stick. Click here: Is this Pope John Paul II waving from beyond the grave? Vatican TV director says yes | the Daily Mail.  Its been all over the net, but just look at the pictures and draw your own conclusions.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever been a parent, or who is around babies and infants.

Our kids sin very early in life and they are very good at it.

According to a recent article in the Telegraph (Click here: Babies not as innocent as they pretend | Science | Earth | Telegraph),

"Whether lying about raiding the biscuit tin or denying they broke a toy, all children try to mislead their parents at some time. Yet it now appears that babies learn to deceive from a far younger age than anyone previously suspected.

Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life.  Until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old.  Following studies of more than 50 children and interviews with parents, Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth's psychology department, says she has identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old.

Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents' attention. By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment. Dr Reddy said: `Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.'"

As Augustine tells us in his famous Confessions, babies only appear to be innocent because they are physically unable to sin.  This study sure seems to confirm that.

According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post (Click here: Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans | Jerusalem Post), it seems like Lucy might not be my second cousin a gazillion times removed after all.

"Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that `Lucy' - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the `Robust hominids.'  The specific structure found in Lucy also appears in a species called Australopithecus robustus. Prof. Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine's department of anatomy and anthropology wrote, `The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor.'  The robust hominids were discovered in southern Africa 69 years ago and are believed to have lived between 2 million and 1.2 million years ago. Their jaws and jaw muscles were adapted to the dry environment in which they lived.  Rak and colleagues studied 146 mature primate bone specimens, including those from modern humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans and found that the `ramus element' of the mandible connecting the lower jaw to the skull is like that of the robust forms, therefore eliminating the possibility that Lucy and her kind are Man's direct ancestors. They should therefore, the Israeli researchers said, `be placed as the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours.'"

Shucks!  I'll guess I have to revise my family tree, again!  At least I had an ancestor on the Mayflower! 

Seriously, as more and more work is done in genetics, the whole evolutionary hypothesis will eventually collapse.  It probably won't change much however, because even if someone rises again from the dead, people still won't believe the gospel (cf. Luke 16:31)--that is unless and until God grants them faith and repentance.  But is sure is interesting to watch the old "consensus" collapse as evidence of a common (and fairly recent) origin of man begins to mount.