Scientist Francis Collins, Head of 'Human Genome Project', Finds God

(this blog has grown up and is now a full website.  Please go instead to www.wtness.org.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If someone had asked me what is the language of God, I would have replied, "mathematics" without hesitation. Given what physicists have learned about the universe in the last 100 years and its origins, the discovery of quantum mechanics and new but slow progression of scientific thought towards new realities of life at the sub atomic level in what had thought to be an immutable atomic theory.

However, if you had posed the same question to Francis Collins, his response would be genetics and the unraveling of the human genetic code. In his book "The Language of God" it is the precision of DNA and the countless ways amino acids come together, as if by design, to make life; all life across this world we live in. Moreover, it is done with such magnificent detail and so minutely and with so little possibility of error, that Collins cannot come to grasp the wonder of it without acknowledging that there must be a creator.

If Collins was an only an avid reader making these conclusions, it might be a lovely opinion, but nothing more. But Collins is more than avid reader (which he is). He is also an M.D., Ph.D. and an expert in bio genetics, as well as the current director of the NIH (National Institutes of Health). More famously, Collins was the leader of the scientific team that became known as the Human Genome Project. The culmination of this was the famous announcement at the White House in mid 2000 that the project had done what had never done before. They had successfully mapped the human genome; the blueprint of human life.


(continue reading this story at WTNESS.ORG)
..

John T Spencer
Book Citation: The Language of God by Francis S. Collins
Free Press, Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. 2006 New York, NY

Basketball Church

I used to play basketball regularly on Sunday mornings.  At that time I didn’t go to church at all.   The gym where I played was 17 miles away from my home.  A nice little distance.  One particular Sunday morning I was out on my porch at home and from there I could see a half-court basketball court.  I was thinking to myself, “Rather than go to that gym 17 miles away, it would be nice to get a game right here in my backyard.  I would settle for a good half-court competition to eliminate the long haul up and back in exchange for my normal full court workout.”  

The half-court where the church came to Dorian

After fantasizing for a moment, I thought, “Yeah, Right, there is never anyone playing on that court Sunday morning.”  So I proceeded to go back inside to get ready to go.

I looked at my girlfriend and said, “You know, maybe we ought to go to church.”  The thought just crossed my mind.  It came out of nowhere.  “I mean on Sundays instead of me playing basketball.”  And she said, “Well, I’d be agreeable to that, yea.”  So I said, “Good”, and then I proceeded to continue getting ready to play basketball. 

Well something drove me back out on the porch before I left.  I really wasn’t sure why at the time, but now I know why.  Anyway so I look over to the court and I see some guys on it.  I thought wow, OK.  But then I immediately dismissed them as probably being scrubs.  That’s slang terminology for guys who would not measure up to my competitive standards.  I like a good hard competitive game and I thought, “No way am I going to get so lucky that a good game was about to materialize in front of my eyes.” 

(Read the rest at WTNESS.ORG)

Dorian

Troy, Michigan

This story happened around 2001.

In first encounter with any church, Michigan teen has back and legs healed

Two years ago, in the middle of the EACH initiative (editor’s note:  see www.EACHtoday.com for explanation), I attended an evangelism training session at a local congregation.  It was a rather small crowd, and included 2 college kids that I had never met before.  Turns out that one of them had not been to church before, and had been invited by his friend.  The message that evening was about Jesus healing

the blind man, a powerful story from the Gospels.  Immediately afterwards, this college kid who had never attended before came forward to receive Christ, saying something to this effect: “I want to know that Man.”  After the pastor prayed with him, the kid...

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

]
Mo Thomas

Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan

What's the point of all those Padre Pio miracles?

This posting is about Padre Pio, the 20^th century Italian monk who by all accounts had a very close-knit and active relationship with Jesus.  His life was marked by willing personal sacrifice and hundreds of miracles. Some of the things that happened are so unusual that his biography reads like fiction.  But according to hundreds of witnesses and recorded statements from people whose lives were converted by interaction with Padre Pio, these things really happened (I’ll mention some later in this article).    

If you believe what was reported about Padre Pio, there are a couple of ways to react to such a story.    

1. “How curious!  How fascinating!  This is a great conversation piece.  When I’m done with this story, I’ll search for other oddball stories, like how a restaurant just set the world record for making the world’s largest cheeseburger.”
2. “There must be a reason these things happened.  There must be something God wants us to learn from Padre Pio’s life, and I want to find out what that is… (right after I finish my cheeseburger… I got a hankering for one).

I finished my own large cheeseburger, so I decided to really think about the ‘meaning’ behind his life.

Let me first catch you up on who this Padre Pio is, and why he’s attracted attention for years.

A rare photo of the stigmata on Padre Pio's hand.

• Lived in Italy from 1887 – 1968.  (Alive while I was alive, which makes him more credible than some middle-ages dude... there are photos and videos after all).
• From an early age behaved well, loved God, followed the rules, kind to others.
• At the age of five, began to have spiritual ecstasies and apparitions, including visions of the Blessed Mother Mary.  But he didn’t report them to others until years later “Because I thought they were ordinary and happened to everybody.”...

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Source:  Padre Pio, Man of Hope by Renzo Allegri, Published by Servant Publications, 2000.
Two (of many) websites about Padre Pio:  Biography of Padre Pio.  A few Miracles of Padre Pio.  

God helped without being asked. Gave caregiver energy to continue after the point of exhaustion.

She was stressed out from caregiving, but God helped

I once felt "led" to stop at a yard sale -- I walked around aimlessly but picked up two record albums and bought them for $1 each. One was a children’s record that was for physical education / dance instructors, the other was a Gaither Trio children’s record from 1980.

Later, I felt led to give them to a drama instructor at Lindenwood Christian Church who I didn't know very well. Feeling stupid I brought them to church not really knowing what to do, but had my opportunity, and oddly nervous I told him that I really didn't know why but I felt God wanted me to give him these two records.

He was really wowed and shocked and thought he was dreaming. They were HIS records that disappeared from a church office in 1989, and he was trying to get duplicates on eBay to no avail. He even showed me where he had attempted to write his name on one of them as a child. He had prayed that God would help him find these records on the internet.

Rarely are miracles this obvious. Just a chance meeting in the street or meeting the right person in an unlikely place, or an unlikely/impossible chain of events that others don't believe, are examples.

A Grace of God… is something that could not have happened without God's intervention.

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Nick Vujicic on why he is happy with his life… without arms or legs

(this blog has grown up and is now a full website.  Please go instead to www.wtness.org.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Preacher Nick Vujicic.

“Do you know God? …Why is he interested in us?  Why would he ever have the time of day to listen to my prayer?  Who am I compared to God, the creator of the universe?... It’s a big thought. (smile)  For me, God is everything. (nods) For me, there were many times in my life where I did not have peace in my life. And seeking the answers to many questions and of course being born without limbs, I asked God “Why did this happen?” (furrowed brows)  You know, we always talk to God more on a bad day (heh!).  We ask God for things, we thank God for things, but if you get to know him, do you talk to Him apart from just asking him for things?  Because if I had a friend and I just called him up when I needed him, it’s not really a friendship.  (smile).  Do you that he is excited to hear from you?  Do you know that you were on his mind before the earth began and he formed you in your mother’s womb?  That was such an amazing peace that I had at 15 years old. To know that I finally have someone who is going to be with me through it all.  Who knows all my circumstances, who is BIGGER than my circumstances. 

Nick Vujicic speaking about how
 it's possible for him to be happy.

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Partial transcript of an interview with Nick Vujicic, the man who has no limbs, but is happy anyway.

The Murderer who became a Nun

I have been part of a volunteer prison ministry for years at a prison in Washtenaw County, Michigan.  While there, I met a woman that everyone knew only as “Granny”.  She had been in prison for 42 years, and was serving a life sentence without parole for a murder she committed when she was a very young woman.  Only in the past year did I discover what her real name was, but for her sake, I won’t share it here.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, in her waning days in office (end of 2010) introduced a program which commuted the sentence of certain non-violent offenders serving life sentences.  Their sentence would be set to equal their time served.  Only a small percentage of those who applied for commutation under their program were granted release  Granny was one of them...



(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

    
Dan Fedder