I haven’t posted in a few days mainly because I’ve been swamped with school work, work work, and other various things. Will post something soon …
‘An Islamist threat like the Nazis’
If you know anything about history, you know that we must learn from it or else face the same consequences in different circumstances. I found the article above particularly interesting and important because it has to do with our future generations, if not our own.
The author links the rise of radical Islam in Europe to the rise of the Nazi’s in Europe in the 1930’s. Although many would suppose that the recent riots in France are simply due to racial oppression, there is something much deeper at work here. Though that may well be part of it, there is huge opportunity here for radicalism to envelop an entire generation of young Muslisms (if it hasn’t begun already), just as Nazism enveloped the German people.
I’m finishing up Ethics in Management today and man am I glad. This class was a good exercise though in not only defending absolute truth (as it pertains to scripture and such), but also taking down the whole system of relativism which much of ethical theory is based on.
Post-modernity has infiltrated every facet of the West, and it seems people are slowly discovering it’s a dead-end philosophy. However, many within the academic community seem to still be holding on to this thought (not sure why, they’re supposed to be the smart ones). So, taking some of the apologetic arguments from one of my favorite books, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, by Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, I was successfully able to take down this system which is what a majority of the theory behind ethics in our day comes from.
Well, I’m experimenting with a new radio channel, “westerfunk.net >>> radio.” Check it out on westerfunk.net/radio. I don’t have it listed on any Shoutcast servers, mainly because I don’t want a ton of traffic (or RIAA and/or the FCC to come beat down my door). I mainly wanted to set it up to play with Shoutcast and learn how to setup this amazing free audio/video streaming server. I have most of my favorite bands, DJ mixes, and other various stuff playing on there now, so feel free to check it out from the links above. It’s broadcasting on TCP ports 8000 and 8002 (Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi, respectively) so you may not be able to get to it through certain firewall setups (such as a work environment), but give it a shot anyway and shoot me an email and tell me what you think.
I downloaded GoogleTalk (www.google.com/talk) last night and did some experimenting. I am very impressed. The VoIP function is one of the more impressive aspects about it mainly because it seems to have some rather intelligent networking algorithms within it. I’ll explain. I setup GoogleTalk on my laptop as well as one of my servers just to test out its functionality. I then called my server from my laptop and when I picked up the call on my server, it connected through my local area network instead of proxying through the internet to google’s server and then back to my server. In addition, today when I connected to my home network via my VPN connection from a remote location, I performed the same action (calling my server from my laptop) and it even connected through the VPN tunnel! For those of you that don’t understand why this is important, basically an entire voice conversation can be encrypted, meaning if someone wants to snoop my connection to possibly listen in on my communication, all the data is scrambled. The program seems to work about 10x better than AIM or MSN and the install is super-smooth. Pretty sweet …
“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.'”
Having been adopted into the Kingdom of God by faith in Jesus Christ, we have been destined to receive all of the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness He earned while He was here, submitting perfectly to the expressed will of the Father, where it climaxed at Calvary.
O LORD,
My every sense, member, faculty, affection, is a snare to me, I can scarce open my eyes but I envy those above me, or despise those below. I covet honour and riches of the mighty, and am proud and unmerciful to the rags of others; If I behold beauty it is a bait to lust, or see deformity, it stirs up loathing and disdain; How soon do slanders, vain jests, and wanton speeches creep into my heart!
Am I comely? what fuel for pride! Am I deformed? what an occasion for repining! Am I gifted? I lust after applause! Am I learned? how despise what I have not! Am I in authority? how prone to abuse my trust, make my will my law, exclude others’ enjoyments, serve my own interests and policy! Am I inferior? how much I grudge others’ pre-eminence! Am I rich? how exalted I become!
A Bulldozer Against Synergism: Monergism / Synergism Debate – John Hendryx (Absolutely Excellent!)
I cannot stress the importance of understanding what is at stake here in this debate. Many believers set this debate aside as a “non-issue” or that we’re just arguing over theological semantics that have no real significance in the believers life. What is at stake is a correct and truthful understanding of 1) man, 2) God, and 3) how a person is saved, which inevitably affects your Gospel presentation.
What you believe concerning these things has ramifications in your life all across the board in regard to your dictation of the Gospel to unbelievers, what you believe about God, and how you live out what you believe in your life, just to name a few. It has to do with coming to a true, scriptural understanding of our nature as humans being so exceedingly corrupt and God’s unsurpassable holiness, justice, love, mercy, grace, perfection, sovereignty, and righteousness.
I just can’t stop cracking up at this when I see it. I was watching Conan last week and he presented the audience with a picture of the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen. Next to it he put a picture of himself and the resemblance is amazing. She could seriously be his mother or even him dressed up as a woman. He has gained some serious viewership over there from this whole thing … as well as here.