My dad was a factory rep for GM, Chevrolet Division. We lived and breathed cars in our house and my love of cars has remained to this day. Used to be that cars were marketed as being comfortable and reliable, nowadays it’s all horsepower and performance. You can buy a car right off the showroom that is capable of nearly 200 mph top speed!

Speed and power are modern obsessions for men. In the natural world, living things have been carefully designed for more practical reasons. Speed is not the focus, but it does have its place. Appearantly, one reason for amazing speed is to baffle men. In man’s way of viewing speed, you would maybe pick a flying animal as your primary group to work with. The air offers the least amount of resistance to motion. The ground has too many obstacles and you need super fast muscle action and reflexes to track the ground passing beneath the animal.

God’s design for His fastest creatures trumps man hands down. Flat out the fastest creatures on earth are neither birds nor land creatures at all. They live in the sea. No, not on the sea like man’s favorite means of oceanic travel. IN THE SEA, as under water! Even the legendary cheetah cannot keep up with this fish. Cheetah’s have been clocked at the amazing speed of 65mph for short bursts and that is on land.

Some sharks have been clocked at nearly 60 mph in the water. There is another fish that can even outswim these sharks. This fish can streak through the water at least 10 miles per hour faster than the fastest birds in a level path. They are a highly sought after gamefish and they live in almost every ocean of the world. With their sleek streamlined body up to 10 feet in length and the long pointed “bill” for a mouth, the sailfish is the fastest creature known on earth, clocked at an awe inspiring 68.5 miles per hour.

Mankind, with all its technological “marvels” has been hard pressed to get anything to move that fast under water. The Russians managed to build one submarine capable of topping 70 mph, the K222. But, that one nuclear powered sub required a titanium hull and at that great speed some of the external parts of the sub were damaged so much that the monster had to be scrapped.

How does the sailfish manage such incredible speed under water? Noone knows except the Designer Himself! The techology employed in the design of the sailfish is way over our heads and emphasizes the point that the only way nature could have created such a wonder is in the imaginations of man, where all sorts of absurdities have come to life.

Wayne Hollyoak

Ever seen a Hubble photo of a galaxy. They usually have a pinwheel look to them. Flat with 2 arms swept back like they are spinning. Our sun and solar system are inside a galaxy that may look very much like them as well. It’s called the “Milky Way” and if you live far enough away from the big city, you may be able to look along the “Milky Way” as a band of densly packed stars that goes across the night sky.

What you are looking at is a view from inside one of those pinwheels. Our sun is one of those millions of stars that very slowy orbits around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our sun travels around the center of the galaxy at roughly the same speed as many other stars, but the sun’s orbital path is slightly out of alignment with the middle axis of the Milky Way. So, in only 2 places of the sun’s journey around the galaxy does it ever actually pass thru the Milky Way’s center axis. It only happens about every 30,000 years or so. The year 2012 just so happens to be about 30,000 years since the last time.

In that year, the Milky Way will be the narrowest it will ever be for the next 30,000 years. That also means that 15,000 years later it will be the widest it ever be for another 30,000 years or so after that. Let’s hope that the center axis of our galaxy doesn’t hold any sort of a debris ring like Saturn and some other planets in our own solar system.

The Bible teaches that the earth is only meant to exist for a set time period anyway. Will earth be destroyed by a comet or asteroid, or will the Creator just pull the plug on this universe we enjoy as home for this time? In the Bible, He gives us a few clues. i could tell you some of them, but it might be better if you read it for yourself and find out.

Wayne Hollyoak