By Doug Batchelor

An Amazing Fact: Did you know that the longest list of questions found in the Bible is made up of questions asked by God? In Job chapters 38 and 39, God poses query after query to His servant Job, who has daily begged for answers to some tough, heart-wrenching questions of his own.

Instead of providing Job with simple answers, God delivers a string of thought-provoking riddles. They start with words like "Who? Where? When? Have you? Can you? Do you know?" He describes all the miracles of the animal kingdom, and He talks about the weather and the solar system and other mysteries of nature...

by Judy Kjaer

An Amazing Fact: A woman who had just returned from a trip to Mexico frantically called the Los Angeles Police Department to report that a live rattlesnake had been placed in her overnight bag. Police went rushing to the scene with sirens screaming. They slowly approached the menacing bag, which the woman had heaved out of a window onto the sidewalk. Cautiously they scattered the contents of the bag-only to trace the rattling sound to her electric toothbrush, which had accidentally turned on!

I carry with me a photograph of a log cabin in Washington state. Although we visit this mountain retreat winter and summer, we never stay long enough for it to become a common place to us.

There's a variety of wildlife on this mountain, from the faithful hummingbird sentinel at the top of a tall, leafless sapling to the elusive elk, whose hoof prints tell us they frequent the top of our mountain.

by Pastor Doug Batchelor

An Amazing Fact: The coconut tree is sometimes called the tree of life because of its amazing versatility. My father, who was a World War II pilot, says that when planes went down in the Pacific Islands, the stranded pilots sometimes survived for many months on little more than coconuts. From coconuts we get food, milk, butter, clothing, baskets, oil, wax, and even soap. Their shells can be used to make a bowl and other utensils, and their husks can serve as fuel for a fire.

Trees are essential to the life and well-being of this planet. For instance, most of the medicine we have today is derived from trees-even more than from plants. Aspirin is made from salicylic acid, which is found in the bark of willow trees. Taxol, a drug used to treat ovarian cancer, is extracted from the bark of the rare Pacific yew tree. Hundreds of other medicines are derived from trees in the rainforests of Central and South America.

by Pastor Doug Batchelor

An Amazing Fact:  It is estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 people die from snakebites each year, 75 percent of whom live in densely populated India. The most deadly snakes in India are the cobra, Russell's viper, saw-scaled cobra, Indian krait, and Ceylon krait.

Burma has the highest snakebite mortality rate, with 15.4 deaths per 100,000 people per year. Australia has some of the world's most poisonous snakes, but the average death toll there is only six persons per year. In South America about 4,500 people die annually from contact with the Fer-de-lance.

None of the snakes just mentioned are found in the United States, where the chief offenders are coral snakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, and rattlesnakes.

by Doug Batchelor

An Amazing Fact: Gordius was a Greek peasant who became king of Phrygia simply because he was the first man to drive into town after an oracle had commanded his countrymen to "select as ruler the first person who would drive into the public square in a wagon." In gratitude, Gordius dedicated his wagon to the god Zeus and securely tied the tongue of the wagon in the temple grove with a thick, strong rope. The knot was so intricately entwined that no one could undo it. Many tried, but all failed. A prophet said that whoever succeeded in untying the difficult knot would become the ruler of all Asia. Hearing this, young Alexander the Great attempted to untie the complex Gordian knot but was also unsuccessful, so he drew his sword and cut it through with a single stroke. Alexander of course went on to become the ruler of Asia and beyond. The expression "to cut the Gordian knot" is now used for resolving a difficult problem by a quick and decisive action.