an_unshakeable_faith.. - Holy Bible Institute

“You have a great big orchestra in there, and you have a conductor, some conducting force, that’s responsiblefor it all. I can say without any doubt that it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen” (Metamorphosis,DVD).MigrationIn September and October one variety of the monarch flies 2,500-3,000 miles from Canada andthe northern USA east of the Rocky Mountains to locations it has never seen in mountain forestsin central Mexico. It even flies to the very same tree where its forebears overwintered! The exacthibernation sites were not discovered until 1975 when Dr. Fredrick Urquhart of the University ofToronto developed a method of tagging and tracking the butterflies. Hundreds of millions ofbutterflies find their way unerringly to these remote locations each year.The generation that flies to Mexico is called the “Methuselah Generation” because it isgenetically programmed to live for six to eight months rather than the few weeks that is typicalfor monarch butterflies. This allows it to complete the first part of the massive migratorymovement and is necessary for the monarch’s survival. (Some of them actually make the entiremigration and return to their starting place in the north.)The migration to Mexico takes about two months, with the insect averaging about 30 miles a day,and the butterflies hibernate over winter in small concentrated areas, with millions congregatedin a few acres. Some of the butterflies actually cross the Gulf of Mexico.In mid-March the females fly north for some distance, lay eggs, and die. The caterpillars hatch,go through metamorphosis, then continue the migration north. The new butterflies that hatch onthe way, though they never meet their parents, know where they are on the migration route andexactly where to go and how to get there. It is the second, third, or even fourth generation thatarrives back in the northern areas from where their forebears originated!“There are butterflies that are programmed to fly back in two generations, and perhaps some in four or fivegenerations, but all are programmed to go to a definite site in the Neovolcanic Mountains and to return towhere their forefathers started in the north. There are more butterflies that make it back to their northern fallsites in multiple generations than in a single generation. ... Monarchs migrating in the fall are programmed totravel to specific sites on certain mountains, even to the same trees used by their forefathers. During thespring migration they return to their original homes directly, or by multiple generations. Their offspring, fromeggs deposited enroute by spring migrant, follow the same migration route as their forefathers and arrive inthe same general area as their migrating parents” (Poirier, From Darkness to Light to Flight, p. 44).“This means that a remarkable system of information is bound up in the genetic coding of eachbutterfly, such that it ‘knows’ at what stage of the migrating cycle the group of butterflies is in.Such a delicate mechanism shouts intelligent design!” (Dr. Andrew McIntosh, Reader inCombustion Theory, Department of Fuel and Energy, University of Leeds, U.K., In Six Days,edited by John Ashton, p. 167).309