A Practical Parable

Mathew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Usually when we hear that story, we think of the great spiritual lesson it teaches and how we should build our faith on the rock of Jesus.  Now, we have to think of what a parable is.  A parable is a story told using real world situations to describe a spiritual truth, so, when Jesus was talking about where to build a house, he was talking real world and literal sense to the people in a way that they could understand it and apply it to the spiritual.





Hence we come to the real topic that I want to talk about today, and that is flooding.  Many parts of the uper plains into the great lakes have experienced copious amounts of rain this year.  Some places have gotten almost 3 times the amount of rain as they normally get for the month of June.  As of this writing there are still a couple days left to go, and both of which feature lots of rain across those same areas.

As a result of all of this rain, flooding has begun occurring.  We are getting the flash flooding from the rains flowing down to the rivers, and then we are getting the rivers flooding from all the water flowing into them.  These floods are inundating towns across river basins all through the middle part of the country.  It is a terrible, costly and growing disaster that is really only in its early stages and a story we will be hearing more and more about as the summer progresses.

Some places are experiencing even worse flooding as a result of man trying to control the flooding.  You see, flooding is a normal part of a rivers life.  It is designed to do that and it makes the land surrounding the rivers extremely fertile.   Because of the great lands, people have moved to these areas. 

Because people moved to these areas they began to experience the effects from flooding.  Man, of course, being the "wise" creature that he is, devised and developed plans.  No, the plans were not to move out of the flood prone areas, but to keep the river from flooding those areas.  Man built dams and dikes in an effort to keep the people of the river communities safe from the flood waters.




Initially this seemed to do the trick.  Through mans water control efforts, the river was no longer flooding every year and people could live along the river in relative safety...  or so they thought.  While mans efforts did solve the problem of the annual floods the rivers normally experience, they created a new problem.  This was the problem of the major flood.

Every so often, like this year, areas get into a rainy stretch and overwhelm the man made system.  Dams fail.  Dikes are them over-topped at first, then erode away and collapse.  Then, instead of getting a lower flood more often, you get a sudden rush of gigantic volumes of water rushing into the river communities and flood the areas like no one had ever seen before.  We began calling them 100 year floods, 500 year floods, all the while never realizing that we were the ones causing it.

Rather than being wise people and building our communities in safer areas away from the flood waters, we were foolish and built right in the sand.  Then rather than recognizing our folly, we doubled down and thought we could outdo God and control the raging waters.  Well, that turned out to be rather foolish as well.  Now the rains have come and the wind is beating on those communities and they are falling.  Once again we will be defiant and rather than moving to safer ground, we will spend billions of dollars to put people right back in harms way.




I think we need to follow the wisdom of god and build our communities on the solid ground where the waters won't wash them away, and we won't have to spend billions of dollars every year trying to fight the waters and rebuild the damage.  The wisdom of God is not just spiritual, but extremely practical as well.  We would be wise to follow it.

Climate Change Realities

With all of the wild weather this winter, we have been hearing a lot of the same mantra we have for the last 20 years.  It’s global warming!  Every weather phenomena for the last 25 years has been because of global warming if you listen to its proponents.  Too hot?  Global warming.  Too cold?  Global warming.  Too wet?  Too dry?  No snow?  6 feet of snow?  All global warming.  Really, it is all malarkey.

We had the emails of the scientists who were at the head of global warming research leaked out with admitted manipulation of the data.  We had model projections of what should have occurred over the last 20 years, all wrong.  We’ve had mountains of evidence brought forth by other scientists that show the global warming hypothesis put forth is wrong, all ignored and the scientists attacked and blackballed.  Despite all of this, the global warmists march on like none of it happened.  They have been caught publishing doctored pictures, fake diagrams, and telling stories that never happened.  The media had to cover up the fact that a global warming expedition to see the melting ice got caught in a major rapid ice expansion.  So what is true?

The truth is, the climate does change.  It has throughout history.  It goes back and forth.  It did this long before mankind was burning fossil fuels.  Man though has short term memory.  Anyone over 40 should remember the 70s.  We were going into another ice age back then, we were told.  It only took 10 years to change that idea.  Back in the 50s there were a few years with large numbers of tornadoes.  Scientists though that perhaps the nuclear bomb tests had changed our climate.  In the 1930s there were climate worries because of the severe drought and dust bowl that helped make worse the great depression.  In the 1800s, there was the little ice age brought about by a volcanic eruption.  The climate is always changing, and scientists of the day tend to think that we caused it or that they can fix it.  We don’t, and they can’t.

Governments have bought into this idea of manmade global warming because it gives them an excuse to move in and control free markets and private industry.  For the good of mankind, the government must regulate and tax you and business and regulate all of your lives to help save the planet.  It isn’t about saving the planet though.  It is about power and control.  They have the money to buy and sell scientists to say what they want to put out, and the power to silence opposition to a point.

With all of the political wrangling though, we are missing a great opportunity.  Scientists could and should learn how to make honest long term models that can accurately predict our weather in the short and longer terms.  It is a matter of national security.  Our food and water supply are essential to our survival.  This currency is much more real that the paper dollars we print.  

With accurate modeling of future weather in the near and long term, we would know what to plant that will thrive in the expected conditions.  We would know when and where we needed to store up waters and make preparations to shift water supplies to where they will be needed.   We can prioritize areas where resources would be most beneficial to get maximum production of crops and animals while using the least amount of resources so we can ensure food and water for ourselves, our neighbors, and whoever else may need some. 

In conclusion, we need to look at climate change in terms of how we can effectively work with and around whatever weather we may encounter rather than this phony fight that claims to be able to manipulate the weather by imposing government control over lives, businesses and property. 

The Forgotten West 1/19/14

Most of the weather attention this year has been focused east of the Rocky Mountains with the bitter arctic outbreaks and the big snows that have many places already passed their seasonal averages in only ½ the winter.  This week starts no different with another snow system whipping down out of Canada bringing a swath of 6 inch snows from the high plains through the western lake and into the Ohio valley.  That will be followed by yet another arctic outbreak pushing temperatures down below zero again. 


Meanwhile, in the west, severe drought conditions have set in.  It has gotten so bad that California declared a state of emergency due to the dry conditions.  Experts are predicting a very dangerous fire season as tinder is bone dry and could be ignited by the slightest spark.  This was the case in Southern California where some homeless men started a camp fire in the strong Santa Ana winds that sparked a fairly large wild fire that caused thousands to be evacuated and did damage some structures.


There does not seem to be anything soon that would spark a pattern change.  To relieve the drought conditions, it would take a lot of rain over quite a long time.  Remember two years ago, much of the plains states were also in severe drought.  That has been turned around.  I’m sure some areas would be glad to ship some of their excess snow to the west coast


This Wildfire picture taken by a friend of my sister in S Cal 1/16/14.  This was the fire started by homeless men camping.



Here is an interesting shot from Rio De Jeneiro, Brazil of the famous Jesus statue being struck by lightning during the last week. 

Snow on the 18th caused this serious accident near Lafayette IN






A little interesting News came out of China this last week.  Scientists have observed ball lightning in nature for the first time.  Ball lightning is very rare and little is actually known about it.  St. Elmo's Fire is a common layman term for it.

Scientists observe ball lightning

And we will close with this picture of Folsom Lake in California.  It is about 25 miles NE of Sacramento.  Notice how far the docks are from the water?  Yeah, the water is supposed to be at the docks.

God's Weather Cycle

Ecclesiastics 1:5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.

In these few verses, the bible describes all we need to know about weather.  All the elements and dynamics of weather here are simply stated.  Thousands of years before men understood the water cycle, or the effects of the sun on the atmosphere, or about the Jet streams and how the air circumnavigates the globe, the Bible lays it all out, proving the inspirational writings are from Yahweh who created all these. 

The sun rises and the sun sets….  This is the beginning of weather.  The sun beats down on the waters, and the waters evaporate, turning into gas and rising into the air.  The wind blows, carrying the now gaseous water vapor with it.  These winds meet up with other winds from other directions that help to lift the moisture higher into the air.  The sun too heating the air helps to lift the moisture higher and higher into the cooler upper atmosphere, where it condenses into clouds, forms into water droplets and falls back to the earth at the place where the streams came from.  Sun, wind, and water.   The building blocks of weather.

The dynamics of the interplay of these three factors determine what kind of weather we get.  That’s where weather people make their predictions.  They have learned how these elements interact in greater detail and can make predictions based on their understanding of that interaction based on timing, location, and amount of each factor. 

I myself find it a little funny that man has spent all these years discovering what the Bible had already told us thousands of years ago, and we act like we have accomplished something.  I also find it laughable that we think that in some way we can either control or effect this interaction that God has put into play.  Man has tried many ways to manipulate the weather, with no effect.  At the same time we claim that we have irrevocable effected the weather by a mere 100 years of advancement, despite the fact that records show far more extreme weather occurrences long before man became “civilized”

Yahweh is the one who created weather, and He is the one who controls it.  God set it in motion, created the parameters and laws of its functioning.  It is He who can alter it at His will.  If and when He chooses, Yahweh can use weather to punish, or save, bring judgment or blessing. Rather than worry about what us tiny little creations are doing to the weather, we should be paying attention to changes in the weather that the creator of weather is bringing about.  Jehovah God just might be trying to tell us something through the weather.