July / August  2009 A 332 page published autobiographical edition (2009) of Hiking the Trail of Truth is now available from Xulon Press! Click on the link below to order your personal copy of this award winning edition, or Phone 866-909-BOOK (2665). Xulon Press * Previous Newsletters    (Archives)  Website Home Page  (Trailheads) Contact  Hiking the Trail of Truth,  Mark's Trail Phone # 909-549-0068,  or e-mail   hikemark@hotmail.com Page 2   From The Editor... Hello, and Welcome to the July/August 2009 HTTOT Newsletter!  We here at Hiking the Trail of Truth sincerely hope this year that you have allowed the loving Spirit of God to be active within your heart, and that you are perhaps able to get out for a hike and consider many of the wonders He has made. We are uniquely drawn to these wonders because we were formed from the very dust of the earth, and, because of that relationship, we have the ability to develop the understanding that will allow us to discover our unique balance with nature. Come along with us on a most profound adventure of learning... WEBSITE NEWS: Knowing God is first seeing Him through the things He has made (Romans 1:20).  Hiking the Trail of Truth is here to help you along in your journey of discovery and sharing. If you have been or are presently unable to get out this season for a physical hike, just visit our website's feature trail for this month; The Lake Trail. Your mental trek there can take you where you may be unable to journey physically. The eye-opening education, inspiration and lasting encouragement which you can find along the Lake Trail will be well worth your time... Just click on the Lake Trail link in this newsletter, or click on the marker at the website's Hiking Maps and Trailheads page. — We sincerely hope that you will hike all of our devotional and educational trails at the website this year. Again, we are here to help you in any way we can and, as always, look forward to hearing from you. Hiking the Trail of Truth is currently one of the most truthfully informative Christian sites on the web. Please, be our guest; explore this truth for yourself and discover! The most important way to begin your day is with a short reading from the Bible. Today is indeed a good time to begin that resolve. For this purpose, the Mountain and Valley Trail was built. There you will find daily Bible readings for the entire year, with accompanying photos, created especially for you. To locate this picture/Scripture calendar, simply click on the Mountain and Valley Trail marker at Hiking Maps and Trailheads. You will find a compass there that will lead you to the calendar of months, and you can then choose a month to begin your day-by-day readings. Your daily journey through life is sure to begin in the right direction!  After all, we live only one day at a time, right?— Why don't you then take the opportunity now and begin a one-year hike along the Mountain and Valley Trail. You will not be disappointed, in fact, your journey will be full of enlightening, life-changing insights! Don't forget that HTTOT offers FREE COUNSELING to anyone who wants it (Lord knows we all need it). Your varied questions are also important, and are given the utmost consideration in answering them. For you to be aware of the truth, in a world where falsehood abounds, is very important to us. Your spiritual struggles are of our utmost concern—we can help!  We serve a loving and compassionate Creator. So just phone or e-mail any time. Contact information is listed at the bottom of the cover page of this Newsletter, or you can visit Questions and Answers Trail Camp at the website, where a ''submit a question" link is provided, or you can visit the On-Line Church to submit your inquiries or learn there how to understand the Bible correctly. Sincerely, the HTTOT staff. July/August's Letter From the Editor : Hiking Among Water's Wonders On that day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened...  (Genesis 7:11) The great worldwide Flood of Noah took place about 2460 BC, which resulted in the creation of a myriad of natural wonders for us to hike among. Most Biblical students know that when God commands something, it happens. Exactly how it happens is sometimes a scientific mystery. For the great Flood, one theory is that God allowed several meteors to hit specific areas of the earth, causing a 23½ degree tilt on its axis. This tilted position of the earth, which we now have, accounts for the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the two poles and for the seasons of the year. The collisions of the meteors may have brought about violent cosmic revolutions on the earth which resulted in the great Flood. The largest meteorite crater discovered to date, within this country, is in Arizona. It is a half mile wide and 600 feet deep. It was caused by a meteorite, one mile in diameter, that probably disintegrated upon impact. Fragments of it can still be found in the surrounding desert by using a metal detector. There could however be much larger craters below the earth's surface, now of course unrecognizable; filled in and buried by Flood sediments. It's time now to gather the paints and brushes of your brain together and begin to create the following mental picture as I relate its particular details to you: We can see on our planet seventeen very strange features, which can now be systematically explained as the result of a cataclysmic, global Flood, whose waters erupted from subterranean chambers, with an energy release exceeding the explosion of ten billion hydrogen bombs!  This explanation (The Hydroplate Theory) shows us just how rapidly major mountains formed. It explains the widespread coal and oil deposits, the rapid continental drift. Why, on the ocean floor, there are huge trenches and hundreds of canyons and volcanoes. It explains the formation of the layered strata (layers of soil and rock) and most of the fossils. The frozen mammoths. The "so called" ice ages, and major land canyons, especially the Grand Canyon. The pre Flood earth probably had only one very large super continent, covered with lush vegetation. The earth may have been surrounded by a large vapor canopy, much like the canopies which surround Venus and Jupiter. The climate of the earth was subtropical, about 72° F year-round, and storms, cold temperatures, snow and rain were unknown during the 1,656 years that the earth existed prior to the great Flood. Within the canopy the earth was much like a giant greenhouse. There were seas and major rivers. The mountains were smaller than today's, but perhaps 9000 feet high. According to the hydroplate theory, the pre Flood earth had a lot of subterranean (below ground) water, about half of what is now in our oceans. This water was contained in interconnected chambers, forming a thin spherical shell about half a mile thick, perhaps ten miles below the earth's surface. The Bible refers to this subterranean water when it speaks of a "mist" that came up from the ground and watered the whole earth. Todays' water geysers, found throughout the world, are but a remnant yet profound evidence of this initial system. Increasing pressure in the subterranean waters stretched the crust of the earth, much like a balloon stretches when the pressure inside increases. Failure in the crust began with a microscopic crack which grew, in both directions, at about three miles per second. The crack, following the path of least resistance, encircled the globe in about two hours. As the crack raced around the earth, the overlying rock crust opened up like a rip in a tightly stretched cloth. The subterranean water was under extreme pressure because of the weight of the ten miles of rock pressing down on it. As the rock crust opened up, the water then exploded violently out of the rupture. Along this globe encircling rupture fountains of water jetted supersonically, up to almost twenty miles into the atmosphere. The spray from these enormous fountains produced torrential rains such as the earth has never experienced, before or after the Flood. The Bible states that, in one day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened (Genesis 7:11). Scientists believe that the "windows of heaven" being opened was indeed a collapse of the encircling vapor canopy, and that some of the water descending from this canopy met with water jetting upward from the rupture into the cold stratosphere, where they both froze into super cooled ice crystals, producing some massive ice dumps; burying, suffocating, and instantly freezing many animals, including the frozen mammoths of Siberia and Alaska. The high pressure fountains eroded the rock on both sides of the crack, producing huge volumes of sediments that settled out of this muddy water all over the earth. The sediments trapped and buried plants and animals, both large and small, all over the earth, forming the fossil record. The erosion continued to widen the rupture. Eventually the width was so great that the compressed rock beneath the subterranean chamber sprung upward, giving birth to the mid oceanic ridge that wraps around the earth like the seam of a baseball. The continental plates, the hydroplates, still with lubricating water beneath them, slid down hill away from the rising mid Atlantic ridge. After the massive, slowly accelerating continental plates reached speeds of about 45 miles per hour, they ran into resistances', compressed and buckled. The portions of the hydroplates that buckled down formed ocean trenches. Those that buckled upward formed mountain ranges. This is why the major mountain chains are parallel to the oceanic ridges from which they slid. The hydroplates, in sliding away from the oceanic ridges, opened up very deep ocean basins into which the flood waters eventually retreated. On the continents, each bowl shaped depression or basin was naturally left brim full of water, producing many post Flood lakes. The Flood and its receding waters formed some of the most beautiful hiking country in the world. Some refer to it as wasteland. I think they need to rethink their conclusions... Within this continent alone; Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Arches National Park, the deserts of the great southwest and many other "monuments", to include our great mountain ranges as well as other wonders, all places that you will at sometime visit here on your journey into Hiking the Trail of Truth. I have referred to all of these captivating, scenic places as; Waters Wonders. Water is the most powerful force on the earth, as you have seen, able to move entire mountain ranges and carve deep canyons or vast deserts in their place. It is also the most life sustaining source on the earth. Nothing can live without it. It is an ingredient in every living plant and creature on the face or in the depths of the earth. In profound addition, water makes up the majority of the human body.— Modern science has finally discovered that all of the other chemicals which make up the human body are found in the very dust of the earth... The Genesis writings of the Bible are indeed fact. How and why would anyone ever doubt?  It is indeed wise to think on these things as you hike about Waters Wonders.  God will teach you all that you need to know. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Romans 11:33) Thanks for hiking along with me today—see you next month for another letter from the editor! Sincerely, Mark S Taylor Questions? Please contact me. 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