Learning Hebrew Calendar, start here for interesting diagram:
The idea is to see what Jewish calendar means in Christianity. 3 high festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.
The Jews also break their calendar into two categories: Sacred/Religious (begins the year with Nisan) and Civil (begins the year with Tishri).
"Sensual Festival" is what I called this charismatic movement on FB. And this was what I posted, I just updated it with #5.
1. The standard rule: the more it is advertised as revival first, the less serious of a commotion it should be taken in general and the more it behooves us to remind ourselves of the Lord's warning in Matthew 24.
2. Not man but Scripture defines revival:
Greatest revival in OT, by Jonah
Greatest revival in NT, by John the Baptist
Great revivals are never about the events & festivals, but the preachers (i.e. George Whitefield, etc.) and their message first.
3. The Holy Spirit never points to Himself but only to Christ.
4. Anything else is self worship in guise of God's name (i.e. using the Holy Spirit in vain) and perhaps even demonic in guise of Christianity to fool the children of God.
5. God's name will still be raised and His glory shown regardless, but Uzzah's name will forever be despised.
That said, many prominent Christians want to keep a cool head on this..."it is wise to be patient"
Now, after a week or two, they are not heard from anymore.
I have no time for these. I think on the those sensitive in true evangelism and cultural mandate with zeal would quickly be able to tell what's going on and call the bluff, because you love who you evangelize, you have no time for fake evangelism.
Many love to say "I will go evangelize", especially when they retired, when they got nothing else to do. But yet, they look down on people, on cultures. They couldn't dare live with those whom they evangelize. Go Home! I will not speak of evangelism even with these, for they are a waste of my time. Their zeal is as this Asbury festival, having the outward appearance only, fooling themselves into doing God's work.
Now, are there in the midst be blessed by God? Very likely, for I believe even Hitler's action was used to cause conversion to Christianity. But that is God whom we praise, we commend and thank God for the likes of George Whitefield, we do not thank God for Uzzah, we thank God for punishing and making example of Uzzah.
Update 3/15/2023:
John MacArthur called it Chords over Christ:
John MacArthur summarized the reason well in the recent Shepherd’s Conference Q&A session when he described what happened at Asbury as “chords over Christ.” “Shut off the music and see what happens,” he challenged.
It should be Christ over Chords, not the other way around:
Calvin Stapert helpfully makes this point with reference to Ephesians 5:18–19 and Colossians 3:16:
“Spirit filling” does not come as the result of singing. Rather, “Spirit filling” comes first; singing is the response. . . . Clear as these passages are in declaring that Christian singing is a response to the Word of Christ and to being filled with the Spirit, it is hard to keep from turning the cause and effect around. Music, with it stimulating power, can too easily be seen as the cause and the “Spirit filling” as the effect.8
Although their comments above dwarf in comparison to Stephen Tong's take on this issue: Music is the deepest expression of emotion. Therefore, the composers, not just singers, need to be aware and cautious.
I can't wait to for the Shepherd's Conference 2023 to be posted online. They have a habit of posting these annual events free online: https://www.shepherdsconference.org/media
Stacking is a common terminology in this field.
With the EVScope (purchased in March 2020 for around $3k with backpack), battery died due to long term abandonment (supposed to keep charge at most every two months), and recently purchased a new pack for around $70, I now keep this next to me in the office, I shall start building astro gallery with this as learning experience.
This gallery should be well organized. So I need to build a sort of table for it. This way I could compare image qualities between each take of the same object. So it will be a separate page from this journal, though may have links from these entries.
This happened to the new win10 pc (HP ProDesk 400 G3 SFF). Solution is to disable the 2 services that began with cx...(CxAudioSvc & CxUtilSvc)
It is good to have the power to uphold justice. However, the more such power and authority is given, the stronger one must seek out to destroy the injustice on his own side.
America strives to be such a force, especially in other nations, however, when it fails to take care of the tiniest injustice committed by Americans against other nations, it will back fire badly. Very badly.
This is why I would say and have said: If you are not truly, completely for God, He will not only take away what He's given you, but rightly, justice, takes away what you already have and give to another, even your very enemies.
Therefore, be careful also, in how we judge other nations. Though we do not succumb to the wickedness of others, we must even pay more attention to not think ourselves so great that we do not need to discipline our own or give our own smallest wickedness a free pass.
There is one obvious kind: Those who either claim or present or somewhat indicating themselves to have helped stephen Tong organize this or that events or to know Stephen Tong at some personal level:
This is the type one should stay away from. Beware of them. For they are very likely to be not true servants of the Lord. It shows in their own ministries: They don't grow, they are stuck in their own profession without much witnessing, some mutate from one theological form to another, some become anti-gospel-centered.
To learn about Focal Ratio, this is a good teacher:
https://cloudbreakoptics.com/blogs/news/astrophotography-pixel-by-pixel-part-2
And the image below from the site is a good illustration of F-ratio vs. exposure. Basically, to take good quality image in astrophotography, you want to stay away from long exposure if possible, thus, you want lower F-ratio = focal length (obj. lens or primary mirror) / aperture.
3/7/2023 Fun interaction on Facebook on God and Logic. Basically I posted:
There has been debate on this within Christendom no doubt and thus affected one's view on God's sovereignty, i.e. predestination vs. arminianism, various understanding of trinity, Christ's dual nature (creaturely vs. divine), apologetics methods (i.e. transcendental vs. classical), C.VanTil & G.Bahnsen vs. WLCraig & F.Turek, etc.
It comes down to this:
1. God = logic (it's a property of God, attribute of God, nature of God, logic = logos, etc.) or
2. God > logic (God created/authored logic, logic is not logos, attempted archetype vs. ectype models, etc.)
#1. God cannot be and not be, God cannot lie, etc.
#2. Anthropomorphic language is prohibited to fully grasp God. God simply is (Am). Hence #1. is not applicable.
#1. Then God is arbitrary.
#2. No. Again, creaturely language.
etc.
But as a foundation to understand all these, I would suggest first to grasp this:
God is Truth, He is the source of Truth, He is the ontology of Truth.
-Truth itself (Himself) is not the same as understanding of the Truth
(Not talking about human mental capacity. Qualitative distinction, not in a quantitative manner)
-Understanding of the Truth is not the same as Explanation of the Truth.
-Explanation of the Truth is not the same as hearing of the Truth.
German philosophy on existence vs. Dasein also helped advance this line of study.
In theology there is a great emphasis on making the distinction between God's Knowledge of Himself vs. God's Knowledge of the world to avoid the risk of pantheistic switch. (Van Til - The Defense of the Faith, Chp 3 The Christian Philosophy of Knowledge - 2. God's Knowledge of the World)
After another google alert about running out of free storage space (11 used of 15 GB), I took about 2 hours cleaning up. Downloading emails with large attachments and photo galleries to my Photo drive. Bringing the used space down from 11GB to 7GB.
Thanks to fyyy.tv's response to my gmail request for links to Stephen Tong's remaining videos: 请问哪里可下载 《唐崇荣讲道集9》《唐崇荣讲道集10》《唐崇荣讲道集11》 等等？I was given new link to access. May the downloading project continues!
Also coming across the old AAA astronomy club music by Donna Stearns wife of Jason Kendall, kept a copy in my 2008 photo archive as well in case it's lost online: UP, UP, UP IN THE SKY
Some facial features though ugly and instinctively despised by many, are liked by some, especially by their own children. Some pretty or handsome figures, though we instinctively fall in love with, come to disrespect them over time, if not hate. Why?
The reason, I think, is trust. That is why couples stay together when they get old, they learn to build trust with each other. That is why a child clings to her disfigured mother, with trust that grew instinctively.
I have too many old, broken computers and monitors at NYGC. Not sure what to do with them. Thought I could fix them for learning projects, but don't have the time for them.
Getting rid of them is a pain, if you don't want to get into trouble in NYC. But it seems that Dell offers to collect for free any old electronics of any brand, in any condition, to recycle them. If that is so, then Dell really helps. And one might even say they are the true environmentally caring organization, in spite of any profit they may have gained out of this.
Complete the online shipping label to print out the free label. Drop off or call 800-463-3339 (FedEx) to schedule a Dell's Package Return Program pickup.
