Category: About the Bible

Meeting Jesus on your couch

Published June 2020

IF you have never the read the Gospels (the books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible) or have read them but found them hard to imagine as history and difficult to picture as real life events, then may I encourage you to watch the free series The Chosen about the life of Christ on The Chosen app?

With a 8.5 user score on IMDb with over 5,000 user reviews, making it the highest-rated faith project of all time, and 100% critic score and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, this is not some painfully acted, poorly crafted Sunday school project.

The Chosen has surged into IMDb’s Top 250 All-time series list. It joins other prestigious series like Netflix’s The Crown and HBO’s hit series Band of Brothers and Chernobyl as the most highly rated historical dramas. Dubbed into Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, besides its original English, it is currently being watched in nearly every country on earth. Continue reading

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Finding a cure for cancer

Published March 2019

CANCER is everywhere. My father died of brain cancer, my mother survived breast cancer, my brother had skin cancer removed and my grandmother died of bowel cancer. I myself have a suspected slow-growing lung cancer and can think of six people off the top of my head whom I know are currently fighting or have recently battled the disease.

I’m sure most of you can too.

Now comes an astounding announcement from a team of Israeli scientists that they have discovered the first true cure for all types of cancer! One of them told The Jerusalem Post, “We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer.”

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Our faith is not blind

WORLD SIGHT DAY is on the 13th of October, celebrating our physical sight – a wonderful gift and a vital sense that helps us interpret and evaluate our environment.

However, there are many real and important things that are not visible to us like energy, love, and gravity.

What about faith? An oft-quoted Christian phrase is “we walk by faith and not by sight” but is it really true that “faith is blind”?

Homicide detective J. Warner Wallace, in his 2013 book entitled Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels, discusses how, as a religious sceptic, he investigated the death of Jesus Christ and the evidence for God in the same manner he investigates cold cases (unsolved murders of the past) in his job.

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Jesus in Jeans 2 – The fancy banquet

 – a modern rendering of the parable in Matthew 22:1-14

There was a tycoon who threw a party at a swanky restaurant. He issued an invitation in the local press that “whomsoever” wanted to come was invited. The only proviso was that they had to be dressed properly in the dinner jacket that he provided. His Son had gone out and, at much cost to himself, bought enough jackets to provide for all possible attendees.

Well, the poor beggar man was only too pleased to exchange his raggedy coat for the fancy dinner jacket and go into the party. He was overflowing with gratitude and couldn’t believe his good fortune.Continue reading

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Are you suffering through Christmas?

Published Christmas 2018

Most people are familiar with the basics of the Christmas story and the manger scene of baby Jesus in the hay; however, they might think ‘well so what? Even if that is the historical basis for Christmas, it is irrelevant to me now in the 21st century.’

Christmas, to most Aussies, has come to mean presents, food and maybe some time off.

For some, though, it is not even a festive holiday but a hard time. Christmas may bring with it unnecessary debt, unwanted expectations, demanding social engagements and painful memories of family members who are no longer with us or relationships that have broken down.

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Zach and Lily

Written for the children’s page

Hey Lily, are you on Insta?

No I’m reading on my phone.

What are you reading?

The Bible.

The Bible! Why would you read that? It is so full of rules! Doesn’t it tell you not to swear, to obey your parents and never to smoke or drink or have fun? I wouldn’t read a book that bossed me around so much!

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Trauma cleaning

I am reading a fascinating book at the moment about someone whose job it is to “trauma clean” – she is the cleaner who goes in after a murder, suicide or bad tenant; the person whom the council gets to clean up for hoarders and wash down former methadone labs.

What an interesting, disgusting, daunting and slightly terrifying job!Continue reading

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Imagine a world without theft

Can you imagine a world in which there was no theft? I find it is almost impossible to do. Imagine not needing locks on doors, or cars? No security guards in stores, no pick pocketing or phone scams. We wouldn’t need safety deposit boxes or passwords because no one would steal online either.

If everything was paid for, stores wouldn’t have to pad their prices and the cost of everything would be lower. Insurance companies would lose a lot of work. If no one stole from the tax man, the government would have lots more money to make improvements on infrastructure and amenities.

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Details about the devil

In the cult movie “The Usual Suspects” Kevin Spacey’s character Verbal Kint famously says “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.

The Devil seems to be doing a good job, in a 2009 poll conducted by Nielsen, 68% of Australians said they believe in God, while only 37% say they believe in the Devil.

Belief in the Devil has been made ridiculous by portrayals of him as a cloven-hoofed, pointy-tailed, red, goat-like creature, carrying a pitchfork.

What does the Bible actually say about the Devil and does one have to believe in him to be a Christian?Continue reading

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