Tag: Bible

Cheesecakes and creation

Peter’s Corner

I’ve been practising making my mother’s baked cheesecake recipe for a while, and I am told it is bearing good fruit.
Now think about this. The chef follows a recipe, or a process, or a code, that is designed to produce a perfect cheesecake. The ingredients do not become a cake just by themselves if we wait long enough. The right amount of time is part of the process – I discovered that when I forgot the cake was in the oven, but fortunately my wife Denise, instead of the fire brigade, came to the rescue.
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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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Virtual reality can ease the pain

ACCORDING to a recent news report from The Atlantic: “The idea of using VR to reduce the distress of medical procedures was pioneered at the University of Seattle, Washington, where cognitive psychologist Hunter Hoffman and colleagues have developed a VR game called SnowWorld, to help patients endure wound care for severe burns.

“The researchers hoped that the illusion of being physically immersed in a three-dimensional computer-generated scene would move patients’ attention away from their real-world pain. It worked: Hoffman’s team has since shown in trials that SnowWorld reduces patients’ pain during wound-care sessions by up to 50 percent, as well as reducing pain-related brain activity.

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Why does “bad” feel so good?

ISN’T it strange that we display bumper stickers that say things like “Bad to the Bone”, “10% nice, 90% naughty” and have skulls on them, but it wouldn’t be considered nearly so cool to have a sticker that said “Good guy”, “Noble and honest” or “I love my spouse”?

Good is “wicked” or “sick” and icons of evil, like demons, devils, witches and the grim reaper are put on our T-shirts and backpacks.Continue reading

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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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Experiencing the perfect father

By Rob Furlong
Bilquis Sheikh was born into a wealthy Pakistani family and although a Muslim, for the first forty-six years of her life, she neither embraced nor rejected her religious heritage.
This all changed when her marriage to a senior Pakistani Government minister collapsed. The divorce by her husband ignited a longing within her for spiritual truth and she quite naturally began with her Muslim faith.
Reading through the Koran she discovered it mentioned the prophet Jesus several times which led to her reading the New Testament to learn more about Him.
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Don’t get left behind

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

THE BEST THINGS are the latest things—or so the modern mind thinks. Notice how that wonderful mobile phone that was made three years ago is now despised, almost, because later ones, smarter by several degrees, have hit the market. Whatever the cost, one must keep up with the best.

This way of thinking has very wide implications. Old is bad, backward, primitive. New is improved, advanced; hence, much to be preferred.

Of course, there is evidence for this everywhere. Discoveries are continually being made that take us forward. Old, inferior ways are continually being discarded.

HOLD ON, NOT SO FAST

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What we eat

by Andrew Lansdown

 

Some time ago I worked as a journalist on a country newspaper. One of the numerous articles I wrote was titled “A taste for rats!” It began:
In many schools they dissect rats, but at the X High School the students eat them! Indeed such is the students’ taste for the rodents that they consumed over 200 during one lunch period last week.

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The purpose of the Passion

by Andrew Lansdown

Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ opens with Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is here, the historical records agree, that Jesus suffered unspeakable anguish as He contemplated His imminent death.

In Mel’s version of events, Satan comes to taunt and test Jesus in the garden. Like many other scenes in the film, this scene has no historical basis. Such a thing could perhaps have happened, but the eyewitnesses make no mention of it. (From this scene onwards, viewers should be alert to the fact that they are watching not an historian’s account of the Passion, but a filmmaker’s account. While much of the film “is as it was”, much of it is as Mel imagines.)

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