Sorry for the rambling the last imte but basically it dealt with the question that how can bad things happen even when He is in control of history? Does that mean God is bad. I answered that God IS in control because he determines the conclusion and the general path like the major events leading to it but He lets us determine how it is reached but no matter which way we choose it will be reached. In this He is usually passive either permitting or not permitting but if things are not going according to schedule He WILL act like making the stones cry out if no one greeted Jesus on the way to Jerusalem.
Today we will investigate how we can have free will to choose to believe God if we need the Spirit to 'touch' us? This sounds so much like brainwashing. I don't really know the answer but I am hazarding a guess base on the ananlogy I get from studying. A person is presented Fact1 to 10, he may be able to memorize them but he still does not understand he will forget it in a day but sometimes if he somehow manages to connect fact 10 with 5 and then connect with 2 then 7 all the rest will fall into place and he will understand and never forget eventhough he never read those facts again for the next three years, it will be in his heart. Another person may need fact 3 to be presented first then1, 6, and 10 before he understands.
The same goes with the Gospel, we need the Holy Spirit to help that person connect the facts of the Gospel and the arguments for its authenticity so he will understand it reaches his heart and not only his mind. Once connected he understands the message but he still have a choice to choose to believe or not. Hence the need for the Spirit does not remove free-will. What is your take?

I am addicted to the US presidential elections. Seriously I spend more hours reading about it than doing my studies. If it was not for lectures, I would have definitely spend more time reading about it. This is really bad for though whoever comes to power in January( the election is on November 2 but the president will only be sworn in the middle of January) will influence the course of the earth for the next four years, my duties are to study and do as well as I can so that in the next few years I can go into the jungles and show that it is possible to develop a new breed of missionaries and thaqt would really change the world more than any US presidents.. hahahah...sorry blowing my own trumpet and indulging in some fantasies there...
Anyway something serious. I realise that people who think the Bible is full unrealistic well-meaning as pointed out by one episode of the Simpsons don't really know the Bible that much and sometimes we Christians are guilty of perpetuating this myth by saying "ohhh everything will be well for Christians", "God will always bless us", "the wicked don't really lead happy lives" but if you read carefully the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations you will realise that all these are not true. The wicked do propeer while Christian businessmen go bankrupt. We toil day and night while there are unnice people who have it easy. If the every page of the Bible is read carefully you can see for yourself that the Bible is actually is very realistic and down-to-earth it is just that sometimes we pick and choose verses we like.
Does that mean God is not in control? On the contrary. You see God is not interested in the nitty-gritty though he is concern about every single hair on your head and would not allow anything to happen without permission so if you get tortured to death it is because he allowed it. Horrible? Not at all because he will give you the strenght to pass it and when you can't take it anymore he will take your soul away unto His bosom. Now compared with the riches of eternity this is nothing. I am flabbergasted sometimes that people lose their faith because they think God is not fair in letting a good Christian die of cancer or something but lets be honest if you can see all the things that were done, said and thought all deserve to die a horrible death. Thought that pastor shouldn't have died? In fact God is being merciful in stopping his accumulatinon of sins and after where they go? To his side. How bad is that. Lose your business you probably deserve it. We can't complain, read Job but God in his great mercy will more than make up for all that perceive injustice. Maybe not now like Job but in His time.
Back to God being in control, when he said the earth will end at this time it will end. He doesn't care how it is reached but by that moment even if 99% of the prophecies are not fulfilled it will fulfilled in less than a second. God just let's us choose how the end will come in accordance to the free will thing. Notice how Jesus that the stones will cry out if the children do not praise. What I think he means no matter what the prophecies, will be fulfilled. So if the Pharisees are armed with death rays and killed everyone in the world so that Jesus will not be praised on His way to Jerusalem, the stones will cry out to fulfill the prophecy. God's plan is unstoppable but we can choose for Him to do it the easy way by going along with it or the hard way by resisting. The Jews could have easily returned to Jerusalem after the fall of the Ottoman empire but not many went. IT was only after the Holocaust that the Jews began to return in earnest. God said the Jews shall return when they refused after fall of the Muslim government, God had no choice but to permit Hitler to power. So notice God only permit things that will fulfill his plans so if you died a horrible death it wasn't because you were evil or even good, it is because you are not following the plan of God. See by permitting certain things to happen, God is not violating free will but there will be collateral damage as He maintains control over the cause of history.

Sorry the blog used to be in American time which is 8 hours behind Dublin time and 15 behind Malaysia now it is the correct time for Dublin that is.
I was thinking..why do people sepnd beyond their means and sometimes i ti is onthings that are not imporatant. I can understand if you spend beyond your means to get treatment for some rare illness but for things like a camera handphone with computer game functions is something that I cannot comprehend. Why so much money when you can barely buy nutritious food on a piece of gadget just to look cool? They must have a reason. Is it a deep feeling to trump everyone else and because they are not smart, beatiful of talented to do it in other ways they do it in ways they are willing to do it,namely getting into debt or giving up proper meals for a handphone?
Again it has strain of self-gratification. Again in society we are no better. Everyone expects to be rewarded which again is a form of gratification because reward could mean food, praise or even sex, things which if offered the normal amoral human wil not refuse. We who are in a more privileged position can achieve this in a 'sane' and legal way but the knacker kids in the inner city Dublin may resort to stealing and so on. This is a consequence of a society that places so much emphasis on achievement and reward or for the inner city kids cool and glamour which is parallel of achievement. Instead we should place emphasis on character, discipline, and attitudes. We cannot tell the world to but we can jolly well do this in the church.

Yesterday I was thinking....
I was thinking about Africa. It is not a poor continent in fact it has great human and natural resources but where did it all go wrong? Africa is poorer now than 50 years ago and that was under exploitative colonialists. Why is it that African nations are worse off now being independent than when they were colonised? 50 years of humanitarian aid had hardly left a dent. Mind you Ethiopia is still hungry though not as much but people after a while become immune to the suffering and all these nations just sink into the background. Somalia is still fighting a civil war.Why is all this?
I can only point my fingers on greedy leaders. Mobotu Sese Seko has over US$ 4 billion inpersonal fortune and leaders all over have figures close to that amount. My question is why these leader who started as idealist fighting for independence and wanting a better future for the nation become like this and turn in effect their nations inot hell-holes by plundering its wealth insted of pouring the money into developing it? Why are they building great palaces have fancy costumes and massive showy and of course expensive parades and have a false support of the people when if they pour that money into development they will get genuine support. Have they never thought of posterity and how people will think of them when they die? Just becase they control the media and textbooks to wirte favourable things about them, it doesn't mean it will always be so.In the end the epople will see the truth about the emperor's new clothes and no longer be in awe of the leader's great palaces and ask questions why he didn't help them. US$ 1 billion is enough to drill 1 million tube wells to supply 1 million villages with clean water from the aquifers! Mobotu only had to give one quarter and he still have more than he can spend.But keep he did his wealth why? I cna tell that to have the one and only well named after you, you will live longer inposterity than if you have a million statues.
Anyway in case of a regime change people are less likely to tear it down. Are you crazy tearing down the one and only well in the village but people have no use for a statue other than for bird nesting. Look at what happen to Stalin, Lenin, and Saddam. Had they build wells it would still be there. But is it they cannot think of this idea. If only they were inspired by the second legendary emperor of China..I have said this once..he gave his all to serve his people..nofancy palaces, nocourtiers..everything that can be spent is spent on the people's welfare..he lived in a mud hut, dressed like a farmer and rode a buffalo...with such austere living no one really wanted to be emperor except those who really want to lead the people to a better life...then came the trappings of power and women and wealth in imperial life and everyone wants to be emperor...you still se this happening in Africa..leader from oppressed tribe rise up...took over nation...instead of learning from previous government's experience..start amassing wealth for himself..let some of it trickle to cronies..and further won to some tribes people to maintain loyalty at the expense of other tribes and set off tribal conflicts and civil war again..wehnwill they learn it is not as though they are uneducated and cannot read from history..
Then it struck who am I to judge for all humans are like that creatures craving for creature comfort. When most people graduate, they think about getting a high-paying job, buy a house, a car, get a wife, make a few kids, go on holiday, enjoy himself and if he can make a few extra bucks, he will, he will invest in the stock market and increase his worldly wealth....now given theopportunity as an African dictator with a personal army I will say he will do the same thing as that dictator will do amass for HIMSELF. The self...just because we are on the outside we criticise but given the same shoes we will do the same thng if we are not transformed in our hearts by Jesus and learn to deny oneself and take up the cross.
You may protest that you better than Idi Amin or Mobotu ubt if you look at your lifestyle you are just a mini version minus the 4 billion and the diamonds. Why buy a new set of golf clubs when your old one is fine...just because you want it isn't it..is not this self-gratification like those dictators? It is just only because you do not have that power.....a few hundred dollars from not buying those clubs can cure a malnourished child... I am not saying we should be saints but before we criticise those African dictators we should look at ourselves unless we learn to deny ourselves and we will be like them....the lust of the flesh leads to sefl-gratification and this lead to greed as many of our desires can satified with enough money and power.
Indeed until the world learn to deny oneslef and take up the cross..it will he hopeless but as Christians we must not give up and continue fighting...Jesus told us when the prostitute splashed expensive perfume on him...the poor you will always have....what does he mean...don't fight poverty as it will be a hopeless battle? NO...then why would he give the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? The answer He is telling the disciples that the time to do it is when HE is gone for then they will have plenty of opportunity to prove whether they are really thinking about the poor.

Hmmmm...,
some suggestions..
1. education should be more than about pumping a student with enough knowledge to pass the exams....there should also be some kind of character building activity...picking up garbage in school debatable though .but there will be ideas.
2. kids nowadays know more about contraception than any generation but they still have no idea what parenting ensues...there should somekind of parenting skills training if they are also going to include sex education..anyway isn't sex almost always the prerequisite for becoming a parent.

Dear World,
Did the Kidz Klub blitz over the weekend inplaces that was defined non-traditional sources of tertiary education. One just wonder if there are any parental input in their lives. So my mind got sent to another planet that is about sex education. The debate has been going on whether sex education should be made part of the curricula. The divisive has cause us to miss a much more pressing sort of education that I feel is more pressing. I was thinking of Parental Education. Many parents have no idea what is it to be parents that is why you have the animals in the council housing areas and the brats in the wealthy suburb. Thus I suggest that our over-worked psychologists be drafted in to educate school-going teeagers who will be parents with a blink of an eye on parenting. At least things like making responsible decisions and by that I don't mean choosing to use a condom or not but things like choosing to take out loans and all that, things that adult do and things that teenagers should be thinking about NOW so they won't make stupid mistakes when big decisions come one after another and they don't have enough time to think. Thinking...now that is one thing society lack.. and that is not even contemplating...well except for suicide.
Thinking about whether the God of the Old Testament is the same as the New. MAny people could not think that God can order genocide but then I realise as much God is the GOd of love so He is the God of justice and He is particularly harsh on child-killers. I wonder how long the USA has before the number of abortions constitute the fullness of their sins.

Dear World,
I am surprised that people actually check to see if I post anything new on my blog. Weel I can't disappoint them so rom now on I think I will post atleast once a week. At least my typing can do with some practise as you can see I can spell quite well but not type so there are a lot of different error namely unseparated words and letters in the wrong order and worse of all mssing letters.
Thinking about the US elections. Why is ti important. Well It is the most powerful and richest nation in the world and in the Malaysian context they are our biggest investor. Wha thappens in the US affects us. Now politicians will always be politicians you can never fully trust them so it between the bad and the worse but who can be worse then Bush...my friends if you have an iota of intelligence it is John Kerry.....ever Roe vs. Wade in 1978, Bush junior is the first president to sign some kind of law that will limit it9 meaning the law that grants abortion literally on demand)..because of this 1.3 million lives are lost every year! Now compared to the death toll in Iraq since the war began last year which at worst is 15 thousand this is a small number...besides if you take the away the number of people that would have died if sanctions continued or Saddam stayed in power the US actually saved lives...and anyway except women and children half of those killed probably deserved it...Abu Ghraib? Half of them were probably torurers with the tables truned on them..I sympathise iwth the innocents...so the Iraq Was is actually a side show...for Christians limiting abortion is the most important next to 1.3 million, 15 thousand is nothing...comparing with Clinton...Bush did a better job...Clinton may be more popular but that is bacuse he did nothing and that is the fastest way to be popular but his sins of omissions are great he let Rwanda happened, he pulled out of Somalia condenming the country to civil war that last till today of course just because it is not in the mainstream papers doesn't mean it doesn't happen...Sudan was fighting the Christian and animist south until Bush came along...Keery is so pro-abortion he makes me sick and those 1.3 million deaths are the deaths of most innocent people with no sin as they can't sin..I don't believe in original sin..Jesus came to show us that the human borned with fallen nature can choose not to sin though srom our earliest days after birth we quickly give in to this nature.....I would raher few thousand Ialsmic fundamentalist sent to hell if that is the price for put a stop on this 1.3 million massacre.
That is why there should be more Christian doctors..the more there are in obgyn the less abortionist...most of them do it anyway because of money......even in Britain there is a measure of control and so the number is thousands but I heard they may be changing the rule from 24 weeks to put the limit at some teen number...but America is very soon reaching the fullness of it sins at this rate...remember all the nations that God ordered genocide on were nations that killed children...if Kerry wins we can take down America in 20 years..mark my words.