Here are some builds of FireFox optimized for the Mac’s Power PC processor. I’m currently using Deer Park for the Power PC 7540. It renders very quickly, about the only thing I wait for is graphics to download. Impressive.

Beware! These are alpha releases, that is early working releases. Use at your own risk.

Couple that with the Adblock extension and Filterset.G filters and you got a pretty zippy web browsing experience.

(HT: Paulo)

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Following a series of regrettable public statements televangelist Pat Robertson recently lost his bid to be re-elected to the board of directors of the National Religious Broadcasters. Robertson was understandably upset. “A few poorly chosen phrases and I’m out.” A visibly saddened Robertson commented as he carried a cardboard box, presumably the contexts of his desk, out of the NRB headquarters.

Robertson’s most famous comment was that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be “taken out” and more recently he attributed Ariel Sharon’s stroke to God’s judgement upon the Israeli Prime Minister for releasing the Gaza strip to the Palestinians. “All I meant,” Robertson retorted before entering a waiting limousine, “was that Chavez needed a date and that Sharon…well, Sharon, you know, golfs.” Apparently implying that the stroke was a golf stroke.

In an attempt at solidarity, discredited Christian radio teacher Harold Camping welcomed Robertson. “I understand what it feels like.” Camping said on his radio program “Open Forum.” “Men like Pat and I are easily misunderstood and we’re too quickly rejected after some minor missteps” Camping explained.

In 1992 Camping published a book claiming that Jesus would return in September of 1994. When the Savior failed to meet Camping’s timetable he revised his numbers and claimed Jesus would instead return in 1995. When Christ missed that appointment also, Camping gave up and instead claimed that the Holy Spirit had left all Christian Churches and called believers everywhere to abandon them. They should instead support Christian ministries that are not “churches” but ones that might get the gospel out by some other means such as radio and are headed by older men with big ears and deep voices. Camping and his ministry have been rejected and condemned by Christians everywhere.

Sources claim that Camping has offered Robertson a position on the board of Family Radio. It was not immediately apparent whether Robertson would accept. A spokesman for the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson’s ministry and home of the 700 Club, said that they had no official announcement and that they could not comment on what might or might not happen. They immediately retracted that statement as it apparently violated Robertson’s own broadcasting standards.

So you’ve heard it, “The Reformers didn’t do missions.” I’ve heard it. I believed it. I defended it by saying that they were busy with other things and couldn’t do it all. Well it turns out that it just isn’t true. From a very old edition of St. Anne’s Pub comes this (1MB MP3). Proof that Calvin actually did send out missionaries and was interested in sending out more.

This is good news. The Reformation and the Reformers were the most thorough Biblicists, examining and applying the Word to life and the Church. For them to somehow miss missions is inconceivable. ¹Yes, the word does mean what I think it means. I’m glad to hear that they didn’t.

Added: Here is the article they refer to in the MP3.

Update: MP3 link is fixed (sorry Cartee!)

I listen to NPR all the time. I love NPR. They are accused of being liberal and there is a bit of a leftward lean but they tend to be much more moderate then anything else. Also, I like the fact that they don’t spend only 5 sentences on a news story. They try to dig into it a little and let you know what’s going on. Often they will bring in two different perspectives and let us hear from them.

The one topic that they most often bother me about is religion. Not just Christianity, but religion in general. Whenever someone they are speaking to is strongly religious, they always seem to somehow imply that there is a reason for it other than sincere belief. The one I’ve picked up on more often than not is when they imply that some personal trauma has lead to the individual’s deep religious belief. In other word, the person has a crutch. Another motive they seem to insinuate is that religious convictions are held for sociological reasons. For example, a person opposes abortion on religious grounds because they have an agenda for women. NPR will usually repeat that what the person believes, that is that life begins at conception, but somewhere along the way, the commentary will imply that there are other reasons as well.

What really bothers me is the personal trauma one. People only turn to religion in response to crisis, they seem to think. But we don’t always or necessarily often. I didn’t respond to the gospel because of a crisis. My life was going pretty well at the time. I had just gotten married, was doing well at work, I was happy. I responded to the gospel, well, I’m not sure why. I had heard it often enough growing up and never really got it. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t respond to it either.

I can’t think of any particular NPR story that illustrates my point, it is more of a general observation. But I’ll be listening and when I come across a story, I’ll post a link and analysis.

So a Danish newspaper ran some cartoons of Muhammad and Muslim’s are really angry. There are rules, I hear, against depictions of the “Prophet” and the Danish have violated them. When I first heard I thought that it was mighty insensitive of the normally liberal Danish society. The reaction in some Muslim nations has been intense including the most effective boycott I’ve ever heard of. Don’t forget that Danish filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered for his work showing Muslim mistreatment of women. So there appears to be some existing tension between the Danish media and Islam already.

Well, as the title of this post (and the title of the BBC News headline it comes from) things have gotten kicked up a notch. The Western media has bent over backwards to portray Islam as a “peaceful religion”. Heck, our own President, ostensibly a Christian, called Islam a “noble religion” during the State of the Union address. Anyway, I have been amazed at our generally liberally-inclined media’s response to a religion that subjugates women. I thought they would be ill-disposed to it but they haven’t been. Till now. Newspapers in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have all run the cartoons! What a shocker! I mean France??!!

Here’s some helpful quotes from this BBC News article:

Reporters Without Borders said the reaction in the Arab world “betrays a lack of understanding” of press freedom as “an essential accomplishment of democracy.”

In Berlin, Die Welt argued there was a right to blaspheme in the West, and asked whether Islam was capable of coping with satire.

Islam was given a pass on the feminist test for Western media but when it comes to their Sacred Cow, free speech, it appears that they can let things can only go only so far. So I wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the romance the Western media has had with Islam, portraying it as a misunderstood and persecuted religion. Christianity, of course, is the bad guy.

Somehow, I don’t think this tiff will last too long. Even with the media affirming their rights to say whatever they want, I think the lure of Islam will over come their political agendas. Can’t pass up a good story.

So on a whim I downloaded and installed the first public beta of Internet Explorer 7. It seems to have installed some kind of Quartz like video layer or at least turned on anti-aliasing. The screen now looks a lot more like my Powerbook than it used to.

IE7 introduces tabbed browsing. A little late to the game but there it is. There is also a Exposé-like button that puts all the tabs on the same screen so you can see what you have open. It has a built in search bar and RSS feeds (again, a little late to the game).

Overall, it doesn’t make my eyes bleed like IE6 used to. But it is still torturously slow. The screen updates lag pretty severly. When you load my homepage via FireFox or Safari, the rendering engines in those browsers chew it up and spit it out pretty fast. IE6 would take forever and this beta of 7 isn’t much better.

So, I guess my bottom line recommendation: It is still beta, wait till it gets released for real. I will be.

Edit: I will wait till it goes gold before I even consider using it at work on my PC. It is very unlikely that I will replace FireFox with it anytime soon. As in ever.

Read it here:

Christian Studio Explains Hiring of Gay Actor – Christianity Today Movies

I hope this is the end of the discussion and people will see the film already.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Later nineteenth-century revivalists stressed the primary importance of public acts: the sinner must repent and witness to their conversion in some public way, such as “walking the aisle” or “coming forward to the altar.” An interesting byproduct of this was that baptism came to be viewed as a means to witness to one’s conversion, especially to nonbelievers. There is little if any biblical warrant for this, but many have come to see witness as the fundamental meaning of baptism.

Gordon T. Smith, Beginning Well, 97

And that is exactly right. The Bible speaks of baptism in many ways (here’s my meditation on one of them) but never as a public witness of one’s faith. I often wondered where that came from and after reading Smith, I felt like I should have slapped my forehead and said, “Yeah. Of course!”

Smith’s book is very good. It is provoking in some ways but it challenges some old assumptions too. I’m reading it slowly and carefully, more carefully than I do other assigned readings. Part of my problem is that I am also reading Victor Hamilton’s Handbook on the Pentateuch at the same time. It likewise is excellent and is causing me to read slowly and reflectively. I am struggling to keep up with my reading but for good reason. It is very good!

2Sa 23:1-7 records King David’s last words. Some commentators question whether these are indeed David’s last words since chapter 24 has more of David’s deeds, 1Ki 1 & 2 depict the end of David’s life and in 1Ki 2 he gives his last words to Solomon. Even more, 2Sa 22-24 don’t seem to belong where they are in the book. Chapter 22 (Psa 18 with a few modifications) seems to fit after 2Sa 8 rather than where it is. 2Sa 23:1-7 are David’s last words and it seems like they should end the book. 2Sa 23:8 through the end of the chapter fit more with the end of chapter 20 since both are lists of David’s officers. If we life out chapter 22 and 23, chapter 24 bumps up against the end of chapter 21 and those two fit together also. Both are stories of God’s anger at Israel and its resolution.

So are 22 and 23 insertions? Editorial errors? Redactor clumsiness? I don’t think so. There is no textual evidence that these chapters belong anywhere but where they are. To move them would be to do so without warrant. What we need to do is seek another reason for them being there. They clearly aren’t chronological so is there another reason for the order at the end of 2 Samuel? I think so and I think the author arranged them thematically.

Chapter 21 ends with Israel fighting Philistinian giants. One is even named Goliath. He obviously isn’t the same Goliath that David fought but it interesting that they name is there. As we draw to the end of 2 Samuel the author arrives at this story and his mind is drawn back to the beginning of David’s career. He then launches chapter 22 which is David’s praise of God for his deliverance from all his enemies. Sure, chronologically this psalm may have been penned at the end of the events of chapter 8, but thematically it fits here. David looks back over his life, moving from the youngest of Jesse’s sons tending sheep to the anointed king of Israel. In all of this David praises God for what he’s done on his behalf. Chapter 23:1-7, David’s last words serve as end cap for chapter 21. In his last words he continues the theme of God exalting the humble and humbling the proud.

So when 23:8-39? How does this fit with the theme? Well, David’s last word end with a warning against worthless men. The author then tells us about the excellent men that David had with him. The contrast is supposed to jar us. Yes, David kept Joab around but look at his mighty men also. These were good, solid guys who knew how to handle themselves in a fight.

Then why the story of the census and God’s judgement in chapter 24? This doesn’t seem to fit with the theme at all. Well, I think what the author is doing here really is tied to 22-23. He is warning us that even though we have a good king, we still need to obey God. God can use a good, godly leader as a means of judgement against his people when they are disobedient. Don’t get too comfy just because the right guy is in office.

As I studied this section I consulted commentaries and no one focused the theme of this section. The more liberal commentators just called this section an appendix. The redactors just kind of piled on these stories at the end. The more conservative commentaries acknowledged the problem and then pressed on to interpret each section in isolation. Well, not complete isolation, they did tend to relate chapter 22 with 23:1-7 but that was about it.

What we need to to is ask why the author said what he said, the way he said it in the place that he said it. Sure there may be textual issues but they almost never move large sections of scripture around. It is safe to assume the author knew what he was doing. After all, the author was inspired and the Author definitely knows what He is doing!

So I came the slow realization that Chad Allen, the actor in End of the Spear who plays Nate and Steve Saint is gay. My response was, “Oh my, evangelicals are going to have a cow!” What I fear is that we as a community are going to rush to eat our young. End of the Spear is an excellent movie that deserves to be seen. Yet I’m sure there will be evangelicals who will refuse to see it because a lead actor is gay.

This tragic knee-jerk reaction will accomplish two things. First, it will prematurely kill the movie’s run in the theaters. This will be tragic because it will reinforce the idea that independent Christian films can’t make money and no one wants to see them. This should not be because this was an excellently made Christian indie film. It deserves attention, positive attention. Second, it will reinforce the notion amongst gay people that Christians hate them. The wall remains in place and the best Christians can do is lob bricks with a fragment of the gospel message attached to them over that wall, largely killing the folks we want to save. Instead, shouldn’t we embrace the positive aspects of this man’s work? He plays a straight, loving father and husband who is willing to give his life so that a vicious tribe can hear the gospel. Isn’t that what we want?

The other problem here is that we once again single out homosexuality as the unpardonable sin. What if we had gotten a man to play the part who was a fornicator? Or a Roman Catholic like James Caviezel? Or a Mormon? Or are we so incredibly parochial that only an evangelical can play in an evangelical movie? What if the key grip is not a believer? Should we boycott the movie for that? In other words, when we make arbitrary rules where do we draw the lines? For that matter, exactly what is an evangelical? Is it TD Jakes or David Jeremiah? Who’s out and who decides that?

Look. Steve Saint and the widows from the story were very involved in making the film and they were cool with Chad Allen playing the lead.Or does this mean that the families the story is about are not evangelical? Please.That should satisfy us. He did an excellent job. His acting was impeccable if his lifestyle is not. We need to not turn this into a literal show stopper. Pray for Chad Allen. See End of the Spear. Praise God for what he did amongst the Waodani Indians. Let’s get our collective head out of your collective belly button.

Gene Veith has some good comments on the subject.

Seems to me that as Hollywood is falling all over itself to love and adore Brokeback Mountain, a film about gay cowboys, they should have a problem condemning this film which features a gay activist actor and presents Christian missionaries in a positive light. This film should present a real moral dilemma for them but critics have pretty much hate it.