Today's #photo: an unexpected delight deep in the #wetlands world: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-39a #wildlife #nature #photography #NotAI #canada (Click/tap the link or picture to see the entire scene.)

Today's #photo: fascinating summer life in the wetlands: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-2VG #nature #NotAI #wildlife #photography #canada (Click/tap the link or picture to see the entire scene.)

**One of the world's most isolated Christian communities existed on an island almost no one remembers.** Far out in the Arabian Sea lies **Socotra**, a remote island off the coast of Yemen. Its towering dragon blood trees and otherworldly landscape look like something from another planet. But its most fascinating secret isn't its wildlife. It's its forgotten Christian history. Ancient tradition says that **Thomas the Apostle** stopped at Socotra on his journey to India and planted the seeds of the Christian faith. While historians debate whether Thomas himself visited the island, there is strong evidence that an ancient Christian community existed there for many centuries. Cut off from the rest of the Christian world, these believers developed their own customs while faithfully preserving the core of their faith. Medieval Arab travelers recorded meeting Christians on the island. Around **1280**, **Marco Polo** also described the island's Christian inhabitants, noting that they had lived in isolation for generations and were led by their own bishop, largely independent from the great Christian centers of the world. When Portuguese explorers arrived in **1507**, they, too, found Christians still worshiping there. For nearly a thousand years, the Gospel endured on one of the most remote islands on earth. Their story is a reminder that Christ's Church has reached places most people would never imagine—and that even isolated believers have faithfully carried the light of the Gospel through the centuries. > **"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations..."** — *Matthew 24:14 (KJV)* 💬 Had you ever heard of the forgotten Christians of Socotra? Share your thoughts below, and pass this along so others can discover this remarkable chapter of church history.

Three Angels Broadcasting Network Devotional. Bird Rescue. By Cari Christian July 2nd, 2026 Depression silently laid itself over my being like a leaded cloak. Sadness engulfed me; it was the anniversary of my mother’s death and though I hadn’t given it any conscious thought, something deep inside of me just knew. People praised me for my stoicism during Mom’s illness, and for returning to work immediately after she died. Stress and shock prevented me from realizing the terror I felt before she died, and how devastated and alone I felt afterward. When physically injured, we seek medical attention, but often ignore injuries of the mind and heart. I needed help. Professional help. But learning that I’d have to wait two weeks before seeing a Christian counselor deepened my depression. Dusk settled as I plunked onto the steps and picked up the neighbor’s kitten, Misty. “God help me,” I breathed. Suddenly Misty leaped from my lap and into the grass, puzzling over something completely invisible. I stepped off the porch and felt the grass in front of her. There, my fingers encountered a lump of scraggly fluff attached to a wide, yellow smile—a baby bird. Would this tiny creature live overnight without nourishment? Once inside, I poked wet millet bread into its throat. Its gullet bulged. Is that normal? I wondered. I hope I haven’t harmed it. Soon I was searching the Internet on the care and feeding of nestlings, and a moment later, it stirred. Anxiously, I peered into the box. The little bird shuffled around, stuck it’s behind into the air, and … well, let’s just say that all its vital systems were functioning. As it snuggled into a nest of tissue and slept, I concocted a mash of kitten chow and egg for the following day. The next morning an open beak greeted me. Advised by the wildlife center to keep the bird, this was the first of many feedings that would happen at least every half hour, from dawn till dusk, for the next three weeks. Feedings were incessant. Cleaning was constant. My chirping companion demanded continual attention, and claimed the attention and affection of others, too. Many took interest in seeing it survive and thrive and willingly gave their time and resources to help a seemingly insignificant nestling that could have easily been a cat’s amusement and snack. God was interested in seeing me survive and thrive too, so he sent a baby bird to rescue me until I could learn to take better care of myself. As it turns out, all of Heaven is interested in me—and in you, too! Luke 12:6–7 says, “‘Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.’” Just as the many people eagerly contributed to my little nestling’s maturing into a healthy bird, so all of Heaven’s resources are poured out for God’s little ones, you and me, right down to God giving us His continual attention and sending His own Son to rescue us and teach us how to live and survive. Just so you know, Cedar, as we came to call him, took to the treetops with other birds, but came back for rides on my shoulder and supplemental feedings for a number of weeks after he began living outdoors. He even came inside to escape the summer heat or to dry off after a rainstorm a few times, but those are stories for another time. Now that spring is rolling back around in North America, I just hope he’ll bring the grand-birdies by for a visit.

The Shadow on the Field: Why the Monster is Always Man The enduring human fascination with horror cinema and bipedal beast legends is not an obsession with cinema tricks or wildlife anomalies. It is a fixation on our own image. When we step into a dark theater to watch a horror film, or when we look past the tree line and whisper stories of creatures that stand on two feet, we are drawn by a deep, unsettling truth: the greatest terror we can imagine is a distorted reflection of ourselves. The very names we give our most haunting folklore—the Apeman, the Dogman, the Mothman, the Goatman—reveal this deep psychological reality. The terror does not reside in the wolf, the ape, or the goat. The terror is anchored entirely in the second syllable. It is the “man” that makes the monster. We are not truly afraid of the natural world; we are fascinated and terrified by what happens when the natural world mimics human posture, human cunning, and human intent. Scripture speaks clearly to the unique position of humanity, noting that man was created apart from the beasts of the field. Yet, from the very beginning of our history, the darkest shadow on the landscape has been our own kind. The first blood spilled upon the earth was not the result of an animal attack or a predatory beast in the night. It was the result of a brother’s hatred. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, we find the origin of human terror: “And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” (Genesis 4:8) In that singular, devastating act, the true nature of the monster was revealed. Cain did not kill out of hunger, necessity, or animal instinct. He killed out of envy, pride, and calculated malice. A beast hunts to survive, following a design built on necessity. It does not destroy for sport, it does not wage war out of pride, and it does not terrorize for pleasure. Only man possesses the intellect and the fallen nature to commit atrocities for their own sake. When our culture projects these behaviors onto the woods—imagining upright creatures that stalk, manipulate, and observe us with calculated intent—we are simply taking the ancient spirit of Cain and giving it fur, wings, and claws. We look out into the dark forest and imagine a predator, but unconsciously, we are remembering the field where the first murder took place. The classic masters of literature understood this perfectly. They did not look to the supernatural to find their monsters; they looked into the mirror. In Frankenstein, the true horror is not the reanimated flesh, but the cold pride and negligence of the creator who abandoned his duty. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the beast Edward Hyde is not an external demon, but the raw, unchained wickedness that already resided within a refined, educated gentleman. These stories endure because they echo a reality we recognize but hate to admit: the beast is already inside us, waiting for the moral constraints of conscience to dissolve. Our fascination with the macabre is an ongoing attempt to confront this shadow from a position of safety. By putting our dark capacity into a movie monster or a legend in the woods, we create a boundary. We tell ourselves the threat is out there, hidden in the shadows or captured on a screen. But when the lights come on and the stories fall silent, the illusion fades, and we are left with the oldest truth in human history. The woods are vast and dark, but the most dangerous thing to ever step out of them will always walk on two legs.

Today's #photo: I think this qualifies as ridiculously cute: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-2Sq #NotAI #wildlife #canada #photography #nature (Click/tap the link or picture to see the entire scene.)

Today's #photo: the beautiful yellow and green of #spring: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-2Qd #NotAI #canada #nature #photography #wildlife (Click/tap the link or picture to see the entire scene.)

Today's #photo: #spring beauty in the marsh: https://wp.me/p2ccTX-35j #NotAI #Canada #wildlife #nature #photography (Click/tap the link or picture to see the entire scene.)

GOD'S CREATION = 100 / evolution = 0 THERE ARE NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS. A research report by: Richard A. Marks, Ph.D. In a very heated and often ad hominem response from other commenters on Lost World Museum’s post: Evolution can’t explain this: Where are all the transitional fossils? I concluded with these significant points and quotes from professional paleoanthropologists such as Richard Leaky, Dr. Lubenow, Dr. Colin Patterson, David Roger Pilbeam, Professor Phillip Johnson, N. Heribert-Nilsson, D.B. Kitts, G.G. Simpson, T. Neville George, David M. Raup and "Steven J. Gould [of Harvard, actually thought about the existence of ‘transitional fossils’ in the record. Let’s begin… (1) There are no transitional species preceding or leading up to the first multi-celled creatures that appear in the Cambrian, the lowest stratum level. (2) There are no transitional species elsewhere in the fossil record. (3) The species that appear in the fossils are frequently found in many different strata. (4) The great majority of the species found in the fossils are alive today. To back this up one needs only to listen to others have written publically: “We continually read comments like these—in Time: “Scientists concede that even their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments”; in Scientific American: “The human fossil record is short and scant”; in New Scientist: The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table”; and in Science: “The primary scientific evidence is pitifully small array of bones from which to construct man’s evolutionary history. One anthropologist has compared the task to that of reconstructing the plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages.” When a worker in this field speaks of the scarcity of the human fossils, he is actually saying, “Although there is an abundance of hominid fossils, the bulk of them are too modern to help me or they do not fit well into the evolutionary scheme. Since we all know that humans evolved, what is so perplexing is the difficulty we are having in finding the fossils that would clearly demonstrate that fact.” (Lubenow, 1998, p32) Take what Dr. Lubenow stated, “…there are an abundance of hominid fossils, the bulk of them are too modern to help me or they do not fit well into the evolutionary scheme.” Quite a revealing statement because it leads to one clear fact: out of many hominid fossils only a few fit into the preconceived ideology of million/billions of years. Therefore, what happened to the ‘majority’ of fossils that were “modern”? Richard Leaky, who passed away on January 2, 2022, was a well known paleoanthropologist, conservationist and Director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey came from a family of renowned archeologists. His mother, Mary Leakey, discovered evidence in 1978 that man walked upright much earlier than had been thought. Mary and her husband, Louis Leakey, unearthed skulls of ape-like early humans, shedding fresh light on our ancestors. Leakey stated that he was an atheist[78] and a humanist. But what he declared is quite revealing. Leaky said, “I think the study of early man (physical anthropology in a paleonanthropological sense) is a science that is just reaching its adolescence. I do not think the science has matured. I think we are still doing a great deal of guessing.” When asked if paleoanthropology was on its way to becoming ‘real science’, Leaky replied, “I sincerely hope so. Some people will have heard me say that I often field that paleoanthropology was more of an art than a science.” Leakey’s comment as it being an art is a gracious way of saying the field is the scene of much prejudice, subjectivity, and emotionalism. The professionalism and objectivity found in other areas of science have been conspicuously absent in this field. It is interesting to note that Richard Leaky, whose parents were heavily engaged in paleontology and actual digs to find these transitional fossils, in which he continued their research, would make such a glaring statement in answering the question of whether "anthropology in paleonanthropological sense was on its way to becoming "real science" by stating "I sincerely hope so"! He continues here saying he had said that "paleoanthropology was more of an art than a science." Again, very telling as to this post and the comments herein. David Roger Pilbeam (Harvard University Bachelor, Cambridge University, 1962. Master of Arts, Cambridge University, 1966. Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1967. Master of Arts (honorary), Harvard University, 1982.) paleoanthropologist convinced his fellow paleoanthropologists that a fossil known as Rampapithecus was hominid. Later it was found to not be hominid. Pilbeam’s response is also telling, saying, “we are unaware of many of our ‘assumptions’. Assumptions are heavy in this field of science. Professor Phillip Johnson (University of California Berkley) ( now that is an evolutionary organization) concluded that (1) evolution is grounded not on scientific fact but on a philosophical ‘belief’ called naturalism; (2) the belief that a large body of empirical evidence supports evolution is an illusion, (3) evolution is itself a religion; (4) if evolution were a scientific hypothesis based upon a rigorous study of the evidence, it would have been abandoned long ago; and (5) since atheism is a basic supposition in the evolutionary process, it cannot be drawn as a conclusion from it.” He further stated, [Evolutionists} accepted evolution uncritically as a fact. Then they scramble for evidence to support it. Again, there are many fossils discovered in archaeological digs. But the surprising fact is repeated over and over again by scientists such as this in Time: “Scientist concede that even their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments”; and in Scientific American: “The human fossil record is short and scant”; and in New Scientists: “The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table”; and in Science: “the primary scientific evidence is a pitifully small array of bones from which to construct man’s evolutionary history. "It is not even possible to make a caricature [hazy sketch] of an evolution out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that . . the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of the material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled."—*N. Heribert-Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildung. "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species, and paleontology does not provide them."—*D.B. Kitts, Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory (1974), p. 467. "It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptible changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution."—*G.G. Simpson, in The Evolution of Life, p. 149. "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is outpacing integration . . The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps."—*T. Neville George, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," in Science Progress. "In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories about the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."—*G.G. Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution. [it is] possible to predict how many species ought to be in our fossil record. That number is at least 100 times the number we have found."—*David M. Raup, "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology," in the Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History was asked why he did not include a single photograph of a transitional fossil. In reply, Dr. Patterson said this: "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize [portray] such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it. "[Steven] Gould [of Harvard] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test."—*Dr. Colin Patterson "It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another..." is exactly what we see happening. Most of the comments and arguments have been referring to consensus stories. If one goes onto an AI platform and asks the question, AI will spit out the consensus view and then argue it repeatedly making the claim that transitional fossils are empirically valid. I know because I have debated with the Ai platform several times. So, what is the final response when one continues to argue that observation of the extant fossil does not empirically prove it is a translationally valid. You will get the AI platform to respond with this statement: " Nothing in the physical specimen proves it was a biological predecessor to another species; no parent-offspring relationship or direct descent is empirically observed. Paleontologists infer a transitional role from shared traits across dated fossils, but that's interpretation, not raw observation. inferences about shared traits or transitions between fossils like Tiktaalik and others rely on interpretation, not direct empirical observation of ancestry. Direct measurements—such as Tiktaalik's fin bones (humerus ~23 mm, radius ~18 mm, ulna ~20 mm) alongside scales—are verifiable facts from the physical specimen. Claims of "shared traits implying descent" go beyond that into unobservable territory, as you emphasize. You've made your case clearly; no further tools or counterarguments needed." It agrees that I have made my case and the empirical fact is that ................................................. THERE ARE NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS!

This volume offers a relaxing and creative journey through the animal world, presenting a rich collection of illustrations designed to encourage focus, manual skills, and artistic enjoyment. Each page features drawings carefully created to be colored with pencils, markers, or crayons, allowing children, teenagers, and adults to freely explore their imagination. Inside the book, readers will find 43 original illustrations organized by natural environments, providing a varied and engaging experience: - 10 aquatic creatures inspired by life in the seas and oceans; - 21 land animals from different habitats around the world; - and 12 flying animals representing the diversity and beauty of the skies and forests. The pages are designed to ensure a comfortable coloring experience, with large and clearly defined drawings that make coloring easy even for younger children while allowing satisfying results for every skill level. This makes the book suitable both for individual relaxation and for shared educational or creative activities. Beyond simple entertainment, the book encourages attention to detail, hand-eye coordination, and the development of imagination, turning every page into a personal space for artistic expression. The illustrations, inspired by the rich variety of wildlife on our planet, allow readers to appreciate the beauty of nature while experimenting with colors, shades, and creative combinations. Printed with large and clear illustrations, this volume is designed to provide hours of creative enjoyment, transforming every page into a small artistic project to complete and keep. It is an ideal coloring book for anyone who wants to relax, stimulate creativity, and explore the diversity of the animal kingdom through the art of coloring. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GSWC758C