The good news:
“Wild horses could not drag me away from my Macintosh…but your product did. I bought a PC just so I could use your product.” —Rev. Dr. George Joseph Gatis, Esq.
Well, Rev. Gatis, you’re not the only one. And we feel kind of bad for having caused the apostasy of so many good Macintosh users. But we’ve mended our ways.
Macintosh users have asked for it (over and over again) and now it is headed your way: Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh.
The bad news:
“When can I buy it?” you ask. Work on the product has already begun, and the official launch is planned for December 2005.
There is an e-mail notification list you can sign up for on the Logos Mac page.
Certainly good to see another Bible program coming to the Mac. I’ve been pretty happy with Accordance and MacSword, but competition is good for any market, and the more diverse a product range, but more diverse one’s ways of study become.
[Via MacMinute.]
The Bible in txt msg language:
001:001 n th bginnin God {After “God,” th Hebrew hz th 2 lettrs “Aleph Tav” (th 1st + last lettrs of th Hebrew alphabt) as a grammatical marker.} creatd th heavns + th erth.
001:002 Now th erth was 4mless + empty. Darknss was on th surface of th deep. Gods Spirit was hovrin ovr th surface of th wrs.
Yeah.
[From Tom via IM.]
David R. Nichols, from Decision’s Devotional of 22 March:
At Easter many Christians would rather ponder the Resurrection than the Cross, because to them the Resurrection is God’s greatest display of power. But in the words of the Apostle Paul, “The cross is … the power of God‚” (1 Corinthians 1:18, NIV). It is wisdom out of foolishness. It is a reversal of human expectations concerning religion and a relationship with God.
The Cross is still the symbol that embodies the shock value of this fact: God became a Man and was willing to die for us. Because it reverses human sensibility and noble intentions, the Cross can guarantee results only on its own terms. The terms of the Cross are simple: unconditional surrender. Because God the Son was willing to enter into an unconditional surrender to a death that He did not deserve, He sets the pace for a unique revelation of God. He provides this for human beings who deserve judgment. Jesus, unlike many human leaders, did not tell His followers to do something that He was unwilling to do. He tells us to do what He was willing to do: Go to the Cross.
At the Cross we find that we must repent, because unlike Jesus, who was sinless in Himself, we are sinful. In repentance we die to the love of sin and are liberated to live lives of victory in Christ. It is then that we can truly appreciate the glory and the power of the Resurrection. That is how the foolishness of the Cross becomes the power of God.
Despite its biases and other shortcomings, the mainstream media tends to be more self-correcting than we give it credit for being. Most journalists are, in fact, hard-working, honest folks who strive to acheive the peculiar goal of “objectivity.” And even those who are less that virtuous realize the cost of missing out on a story because of preconceptions about religion (i.e., the “values vote” during the last election). It is due to these tendencies that the media has begun to take religion more seriously.
That can’t be good.
Like the tares that grow with the wheat, dysfunctional theological ideas inevitably grow alongside orthodox doctrine. Combine such aberrant views with the natural sinful nature of man and it’s not surprising that religiously based atrocities occur with alarming regularity. It is a frustrating state of affairs that can be reduced but never eliminated. As Christians, we must never fail to denounce such evils and clarify how they subvert the true Word.
If you’re going to be at the Jeremy Camp / MercyMe concert at Six Flags Over Texas this Saturday (March 26th), stop by the Compassion table and say hi. I’ll be working as a volunteer, passing out packets for those interested in sponsoring a child. It’s an incredibly moving and satisfying experience, being a sponsor, and I encourage you to check out Compassion’s site for more information.
There was a time when “fear of God” meant piety, or at least conscience. Today, it more accurately describes the worldview of secular liberals who get itchy and twitchy at any reminder of our religious roots as a nation.
The Christian blogosphere is getting together in October in California. I would love to attend, but finances may not allow it. Time will tell as more details on the convention are revealed.
As a Christian, I’m expected to take an eternal perspective, viewing events not just in their historical but in their eschatological context. But I can’t do that while focusing on the churning events in the last 24 hours. Events that are truly important are rarely those captured on the front page of a daily paper. As Malcolm Muggeridge, himself a journalist, admitted, “I’ve often thought…that if I’d been a journalist in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should have spent my time looking into what was happening in Herod’s court. I’d be wanting to sign Salome for her exclusive memoirs, and finding out what Pilate was up to, and…I would have missed completely the most important event there ever was.”
My wife and I often have conversations over dinner or while driving about the “news.” She hits Yahoo! during the day to pick up on what has been deemed newsworthy, and she usually watches at least one local news program a night, generally the ten o’clock edition. Thinking back on these conversations, and specifically the items discussed, I have to agree with Joe’s premise that very little of what passes for news actually is newsworthy. Most of it I could care less about, especially a week or two after the fact.
As a matter of fact, just this evening, Lee, in an IM, asked me if I had heard about Cameron Diaz’s head injury. He linked to the story on Yahoo!, and off I clicked. She fell off a chest of drawers while trying to put some camping equipment up on a shelf, and boyfriend Justin Timberlake found her later, unconscious, bleeding from the head. She had to have 19 stitches. I just gave you all the pertinent facts, and I’m sure many of you are having the same thoughts I had: So?
This is the kind of nonsense that has been deemed newsworthy, because the 24-hour news cycle has to report something to justify its existence, when most of us would be perfectly happy if the 24-hour news cycle simply evaporated. (This is where you can blame Ted Turner for the 24-hour news cycle, should you care to. And to think I got to use the phrase “24-hour news cycle” four times in a single paragraph.)
In the grand scheme, I could care less that Cameron Diaz smacked herself in the head on a chest of drawers. This is no more newsworthy than if my dentist smacked himself in the head on a chest of drawers. I would care quite a bit more if my dentist had injured himself, as I personally know the man, and care for him, at the least on a professional doctor-patient level, and more so on a human-being-that-I-know level. I’m quite sure there are lots of people who personally know Ms. Diaz who are greatly concerned about her welfare, and thank the Lord for placing people in her life who sincerely care for her. But this doesn’t change the fact that her accident has little to no bearing on my personal increase of knowledge and wisdom.
To put this in to more of a Christian perspective, I would say that I only care about Ms. Diaz’s incident in light that I hope it may open a door for her to reconcile herself with God. I admit to not knowing the condition of any person’s soul, and can only infer from observation. Having done so, Ms. Diaz, like many in the entertainment industry, does not appear to have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps this accident, which, let’s admit, could have ended her life, will provide an opportunity for her to listen to that knocking on her heart’s door. So I will say a prayer for Ms. Diaz, and one for the scores of others who may have almost lost their lives today, but didn’t make the news.
There are few words in the English language more contrived and worthless than “homophobia.” Combing the Greek prefix “homo” and the suffix “phobia” should give us a term meaning “fear of the same.” Instead it is used in reference to a fear of homosexuals, a definition that is at best imprecise and at worst completely absurd.
Gary Haugen, founder and president of International Justice Mission, started the organization to release from bondage children sold in to the sex-slave trade, as well as go after the criminals who sell those children, primarily in Southeast Asia. His new book, Terrify No More, offers a behind-the-scenes, no-holds-barred examination of the sex-slave industry, as well as detailing some of IJM’s rescues and their work with Southeast Asian governments to prosecute the criminals responsible. I have not yet read the book myself, but it has made it’s way on to my Amazon wish list.
IJM is an organization dedicated to serving a group our Lord especially holds dear to His heart: children. It is one we, as Christians, should support with our prayers and financial contributions.
(I have no affiliation with IJM, other than having read about their efforts in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami in New Man. The organization also has a dedicated site for Canadians.)
In addition to the archival clean-up, I’ve cleaned up the comments implementation, and have enabled TypeKey authentication. The latter move is to kill as much comment spam as possible. It has proven quite effective for Retrophisch, where now I just worry about TrackBack spam. TypeKey is a free service, and it allows you to comment on any blog which supports the service.
Just as I did with Retrophisch, I have a new Archives page set up, and it is accessible via the Archives link in the upper-right-hand corner navigation bar. I have removed the monthly archive listing from the side bar links.