It turns out you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. Or at least, if the internet gives you some information, use a bit of common sense to check you've been given an answer that feels right, rather than just taking things uncritically and at face value.
I wanted to know how far it was from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean.
So I asked Google:
You what? 1000 miles?
It's Advent, which traditionally has two focii.
The season is about preparing for the coming of Christ. The more obvious half of that is preparing to celebrate Christmas. The other side to it is about the final return of Christ to this world, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, to usher in the new heavens and the new earth, and to free the cosmos from its bondage to decay. What we, slightly mistakenly, call the "second coming". We remind ourselves that it's coming, and we prepare ourselves for it.
I don't normally moan online about things, but I think there's a cautionary tale here that's worth broadcasting.
You see something you can buy online, and you have no way of knowing whether it's a reliable purchase until you try it. In our case, the amount of money lost was small, but some people make much larger purchases, so I think it's worth making sure people are aware of the risks.
This is just a short post:
PHP released version 7.1 yesterday. Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to get this version out of the door. Especial congratulations to Davey Shafik and Joe Watkins, the release managers, and to Anatol Belski who mentored them.
I'd taken a break from reading other people's blogs, but when I had a look to see what I'd been missing I found a superb 4-part essay by Peter Leithart on the subject of paedocommunion - the admission of baptised children to the Lord's Table.
Apple no longer supports its QuickTime player. Both the player and the browser plugins were found to have security flaws which meant a malicious website could trick you to playing a doctored file in the player / plugin, which would then allow those vulnerabilities to be exploited.
The answer is simple: Install another player. Like VideoLan's VLC Player.
4 times a year, the three main congregations across our two churches meet together for a combined service. They're great times, with a full building, hearty singing, and the chance for fellowship across congregations who don't often get to worship all together.
We've finished a run through Paul's letter to the Philippians. With its themes of partnership in the gospel, grace, suffering, and God's life-transforming power, it gave us some good times as we gather all together.
I'll post this here in case anyone else is searching for this issue
Since my computer updated to Windows 10, build number 1607 (also known as the "Anniversary Update", because it was a feature release timed to coincide with a year since the first release of Windows 10), I've been getting an error when I try to run any command in a command prompt window:
[0x7FFCF5BB70E3] ANOMALY: use of REX.w is meaningless (default operand size is 64)
It's customary to refer to Revelation chapters 2 and 3 as the "Letters to the Seven Churches".
As I've studied, and we've preached, our way through these chapters, I'm not convinced that's the best heading to give them.
In fact, the whole of Revelation is a single letter. It's an epistle, like Philippians is. We get that from verse 4 that begins:
“John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace …”
The whole of Revelation is a letter. It was written to seven churches in Asia Minor.
I've heard Revelation 3:20 used many times in an evangelistic talk: Jesus stands at the door of your life and knocks — will you let him in? Here's the verse:
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
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