Prosperity Gospel: Pimping Through Hypnosis and Mind Control « True Discernment

Pretty sad.


Not sure people are really hypnotised in the conventional sense, but maybe a spiritual one.

Hat tip http://truedsicernment.com/2009/12/30/prosperity-gospel-pimping-through-hypnosis-and-mind-control/

Messianic Prophecy in the Old Testament ~ Bible Prophecy Today

Messianic Prophecy in the Old Testament ~ Bible Prophecy Today

Great Online Bible Commentary

I found David Guzik's online commentaries through some random Google search. I've read through the first 3 chapters of Genesis commentaries and his Hebrews 6 commentary. So far I'm impressed. Check them out for yourself.

http://www.enduringword.com/library_commentaries.htm

I've never met Mr. Guzik and I don't know his background, but his commentaries, at least the four that I've read, seem very good.

Two-Thirds of Church Raised People Now Walking Away From Church

Apparently 2/3's of people in their twenties now are leaving evangelical churches. The combination of shotty doctrinal teaching combined with "secular" education's full frontal assault on Biblical truth from grades 0-12 are apparently to much for people.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100324

Remember in Revelation when Jesus asked if their would be faith on Earth when He returned? Maybe not...unless born again believers wake up and start wagging war for Biblical truth and lost souls.

Things to Mull Over

Salvation is only by Grace.

http://www.faithalone.org/news/y1989/89jan1.html

True, but Jesus must be absolute Lord of your life, else you aren't really saved.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14424801/True-Salvation

Or, a balanced view, that if you are really saved, you will obey, and if you aren't, there is a problem.

http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/sg45-48.htm

Great Transcript with Insights into the Unseen War

This is a transcript from a 2003 episode of Millennium with lots of useful insights.

http://www.timferrante.com/Abyss/Transcripts/mlm221.txt

Allegidly 100+ Witnesses of UFO Interaction With Cold War Missle Bases

Kind of frightening.

Link

Of course, the witnesses are all ones and two of different events, but 115 is a lot if true.

2012 The End?

No, 2012 probably won't be the end, or we should suspect 2012 of being the end no more then we should expect 2009 to be the end, or 2010, 2011, 2013...you get the picture.

Read onward for perspective-

http://www.gotquestions.org/2012-Mayan-prophecy.html

Friday Weirdness

Check this link out-

Link.

Then do a search on Tullio Martella UFO

How Will You Spend Your Time?

I used to do a lot of gaming. One of the things common to some games is the concept of development points. After reaching a certain level of experience, you gain a "level". With your new level comes a bunch of new development points you then spend on upgrading your character's skills and attributes. Your character can't have everything, so you usually spend your development points upgrading stats and skills that help your character be victorious in combat.

Well, life is similar. There are so many things I would like to do in life, but the problem is, I only have so many development points, or more precisely time to spend on learning new things. Where should I invest my time?

Unlike my gaming characters, I'm not involved in day-to-day combat. As I look to the future I've been bothered by the thought that I'm not spending my time in a way that will bring about the most success for me.

So I initially started spending time retooling my web developments skills by jumping back into learning action script and Flash/Flex, taking my Javascript skills to the next level with AJAX and OOP, learning the new features of .Net 3.5, and while also becoming more familiar with PHP and mySQL.

But as I jumped into this a thought in the back of my head keeps bothering me. Is this the best use of my time?

Undoubtedly I will spend time continuing to upgrade these skills and push myself both at work and at some personal projects I'm working on. But how much time?

Here are the rough text of three emails that I received this morning that kind of put the breaks a little bit on me for spending every waking moment in front of the computer learning new geek skills.

The first email was a prayer request from a Christian group from a person who was struggling with supernatural forces. I won't go into details, but the situation was bad, and I was happy to spend time praying for this person. I also got inspired to really get back to praying and studying my Bible daily.

The other email I got was about some new program out their that makes it easier to bypass DRM on music. I got excited and got ready to toss a few bucks for this new program (I know, not very Christian, but I hate DRM).

The third email was about the new MVC framework for ASP.Net. I'm familar with MVC and other design patters, but haven't really formally put them to work for me, so I started thinking about how I should start fooling around with the new framework and seeing what it could do.

Then I though about the available time I had this week. Not much. I probably can't do all three. My time available to "spend" isn't set, so I don't really say I'll put two hours here or two hours there, I more or less set priorities and then spend time accordingly as it becomes available.

So which of these priorities is more important? The prayer/Bible study one by leaps and bounds. And this sucks. Why does this suck? Because it means that I know dang well that I need to spend more time with the things of God then with worldly stuff. Does this mean I'll spend no time learning new web development skills? No, I still will. That is the talent I've been given to earn a living and that talent has to remain sharp. But what it does mean is that I will not be able to be a code monkey. I just won't be able to compete with people who spend their every waking moment in front of the computer. There are so many coders out there who live, eat, and breath code, frameworks, processes, standards. I don't. Praying for people, Bible reading, and learning about the way the world really works is much more interesting to me then coding ever will be, as interesting as coding is. And as a Christian I don't think I can, nor do I want to, set God and His business on a shelf while I create a Javascript object or a cool new MVC driven shopping cart.

In a sense this was very liberating to me. I can be a good web developer, and I need to put in the time keeping my skills sharp and doing a good job for my employer. But I don't have to compete with the 14 hour a day code monkey's out there. I can't, I'm not called to, I have other things that have eternal significance that I have to and want to spend time on/with. This helped me fight back a little bit of depression I was dealing with seeing so many younger coders just throw everything they have into coding. I think ultimately they will burn out, but even if they don't, my job is to do the best job that I can given the constraints and competing interest that I have, and to go on with my life.

So the question is to all you code monkeys out there, how will you spend your time? My advice, learn your craft well and do a great job with it, but one day a thousand years from now, no one will know what great thing you did with OOP. Your code will be gone as well as your blogs and your personal glory. Spend some of those development points on things that matter. Your family, your friends, your God. Those relationships you can take with you, everything else, no matter how intricate, you will leave behind.