Once again, the world screamed foul and unanimously condemned Israel for its actions fueling anti-Israel sentiment amongst the masses… emotional outbursts, protests, riots, anger, hate.

With this in mind I wish to ask us some questions…

Why are we so quick to believe everything we see and hear?

Why do certain sectors of global society hate Israel so much?

Now, the real truth surfaces (see video below), but as history proves time and time again, the damage has been done, and antisemitism has had it’s booster shot.

Funny, how the media moguls never retract their damning news-flashes, and what we should be seeing on the front-page headlines are only seen in insignificant, but intelligent publications and blogs .

Photo: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

We sang vintage chorus’s with great gusto (helped along by a piano accordion) had yarns and laughs and listened to amazing stories (like hiding-from-Nazis-in-wartime-Holland).

We were sad to leave, but eventually had to (laden with gifts and cake).

Very good times indeed.

As a kid I never spent much time with Old Folk — and to be honest, I was a bit scared of them.  Call me a slow learner but nowadays I’ve realised a priceless truth:

Old Folk are just like us ‘young folk’… only older.

Yep… I must declare that Old Folk Rock! (Especially the happy ones that love the Lord and laugh at my jokes.)

Anyway – I didn’t even know Sir Francis was a man of faith until today, when I heard a prayer of his.

A brief history lesson:

Francis Drake was an adventurer and essentially a legal pirate (hero of the English, arch-villain of the Spaniards).  He wrote this prayer as he departed Portsmouth to raid Spanish gold on the west coast of South America.  He eventually returned to England (the long way – via circumnavigation) with loot worth over a half million pounds sterling, and received his Knighthood for it.

Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer (1577)

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

Pretty awesome great great great+ uncle if you ask me

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. (Psalm 2:8)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

Recently however I’ve been hearing an interesting update on the fact: Not only is New Zealand the ‘uttermost part of the earth’ concerning Israel, but that if one would dig a hole in Jerusalem, bore through the center of the earth, and keep digging, that they would come out almost in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand. Exciting stuff to say the least, especially if you live there and are aware of the awesome revival prophecies regarding NZ’s North.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit too cynical in my old age (and have received one too many well meaning but absurd viral emails), but I figured there must be some tool available out there that could prove or disprove this fact once and for all.

Antipodr (“Find the other side of the world!”)

It just so happens that the exact opposite of Jerusalem is about the middle of the South Pacific Ocean (see here).

The exact opposite of Whangarei, New Zealand happens to be the town of Tangier, Morocco (see here).

Mythbusted.

Put another way… if a person was dying of thirst, would he care what the bottle looked like?  Of course not.

The real challenge is then, not making the packaging more desirable, but how to convince our culture that Jesus is the only person that will give them thing that will truly quench their thirst.

10 Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”
11“But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this is a very deep well. Where would you get this living water? 12And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his cattle enjoyed?”
13 Jesus replied, “People soon become thirsty again after drinking this water. 14But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
15 “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me some of that water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to haul water.”  John 10:10-15 (NLT)

1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.
2 I thirst for God, the living God.  Psalm 42:1-2a (NLT)

Comic relief below.

Click on the links below to open the study in PDF format.

The Studies:

01 Cross

02 Water

03 Three

04 Speak

05 Word

06 Power

07 Body

08 Enemy

09 Mission

10 Adventure

Additional files (if making compilation of the Bootcamp studies):

Frontpage

Contents

Copyright info:

Permission is given to save/print the studies for personal and group use as long as they remain in their entirety (including copyright info etc.) and no profit is made from reproduction, distribution etc.

GBU

Three guesses as to what ‘the book that is the only hope for humanity’ is?  Hollywood has got it right for once!

Needless to say, I simply cannot wait to see this one.  Someone has finally cottoned on to the fact that there is a lot of people who will pay good money to see movies with Biblical (and moral) themes.

Relevant Magazine reviewed the film (It’s screened in the US of A already).  This is what they said…

Our reviewer says the new, hyper-violent Denzel Washington film is one of the most overt faith-films out there.

Think of Christian films, and you might conjure up images of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, with Jesus being brutally pummeled and crucified until he dies. Or you might think of countless lesser-known movies filled with sappy storylines, bad acting and moral messages that are themselves pummeled into the audience.

But the new movie The Book of Eli doesn’t fit either of those molds. In fact, this wildly entertaining, ultra-violent, post-Apocalyptic tale of a lone wanderer named Eli who will defend the mysterious book in his possession at all costs is one of the oddest yet most forthright faith-based films to ever come out of a major studio.  Read the full review here.

So, let’s hope it’s a goodun. At least the good guy isn’t a vampire for once .

I think I handled the “There’s probably no God” reasonably enough in my last post. Now for an intelligent exposition of the second half…

Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

The phrase implies that those that believe in God… A) worry and B) don’t enjoy life.

It is said that the person with the experience is never at the mercy of the person with the argument. So, speaking from experience…

I worry exponentially less now as a follow of Christ, than when I lived for my own selfish desires. I enjoy my life exponentially more now as a follower of Jesus, than when I lived for my own selfish desires. I know I’m not an isolated case.

I get extremely annoyed at secular media propagandizing that Christians live dull, boring and pleasure-starved lives. It’s a lie.

I know people living life to fulfill their own selfish desires – and most of them (although they would rarely admit it) aren’t truly fulfilled. Sure, they have a form of  happiness, but it is never lasting and is only shallow at best.

Is the porn addict really happy?
Is the P user really happy
Is the adulterer really happy?
Is the tycoon really happy?

I really don’t think so. I’m not saying all of these people are atheists, but I dare say most of them would claim to have no faith nor belief in God.  The truth (that we again rarely hear) is that sexual liberation does not bring happiness – only a downward spiral into more degrading practices. I have never met a drug addict who loves their life.  Does Tiger Woods look like he’s enjoying his life right now? How many of the rich and famous are confused and depressed? To be quite honest, why does a person crave the bottle, the needle, the encounter? Isn’t it just to serve as a temporal reprieve from an otherwise sad life?

In stark contrast, I know people who are genuine followers of God – who have such a deep sense of fulfillment that suffering couldn’t dislodge. I think that is true happiness.

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness. (Jesus Christ)

So, please let me know (and be honest about it) who you follow and if you are truly happy with your life. I’d love to know .

“There’s probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The “probably” just cracks me up. It’s as if the non-theists responsible for the slogans aren’t totally convinced themselves. Imagine if John 3:16 read:

“God probably loved the world so much that He more than likely gave His only Son so that all that believe in Him probably won’t perish but quite possibly might have eternal life.

Not very convincing is it. The Dictionary defines ‘Probably’ as ‘being without much doubt’ which is an alternate way of saying that there is still some doubt. The slogan might as well read:

“There is a possibility that God exists and your eternal destiny depends on how you respond to His message.”

Which brings me to Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason (debatable), a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose. Put another way, If God does not exist, one loses little by believing in him and gains correspondingly little by not believing. If God does exist however, one gains everything by believing in Him and loses everything by not believing.

The wager is fascinating to study (for some), as Pascal’s reasoning can be proved true mathematically. In fact, according to decision theory, the only rational path to follow is to live for God.  As you can imagine, Pascal’s Wager is a hotly debated topic, and has been a nasty thorn in the Atheist’s side for hundreds of years.

One might argue that giving your life to God based on mathematic probability is not the most heart-felt or sincere thing to do.  After all (and speaking from experience), trying to follow God, without having a relationship with Him is frustrating to say the least. Pascal to the rescue (again).  Pascal never treated acceptance of the wager to be in itself sufficient for salvation. Placing the wager, he argued, is unavoidable. However, it alone isn’t a justification for faith. Rather, the wager is an impetus toward faith.

And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul? (Jesus Christ)

“First they came …” is a popular poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.