Adopting Technology

How might this be useful in providing Bibles to the unreached people?

 

Excerpts from an article in MIT Technology Review by David Talbot

October 29, 2012

With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages—simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens.

 The goal: to see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs.

Early observations are encouraging, said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder, at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week.

The devices involved are Motorola Xoom tablets—used together with a solar charging system, which Ethiopian technicians had taught adults in the village to use.  Once a week, a technician visits the villages and swaps out memory cards so that researchers can study how the machines were actually used. 

After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the “alphabet song,” and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word “Lion.”

The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Great Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.

Does Evil Exist?

A short dialog between a young student and his professor.

 

The dialog takes place in an 19th century school room and begins with the professor addressing the young students followed by a young boy questioning the professor.

Professor:        I’ll prove to you if God exists, then he is evil.   Did God create everything that exists?  If God created everything then he created the evil which means God is evil.

Student:          Excuse me, professor.  Does cold exist?

Professor:        What kind of question is this? Of course it exists.  Have you never been cold?

Student:          In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the law of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat.  Professor, does darkness exist?

Professor:        Of course it does.

Student:          You are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either.  Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness.  Evil does not exist.  It is just like darkness and cold. God did not create evil.  Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart.

 

The young student was Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential iconic scientists and intellectuals of all time. A German-Swiss Nobel laureate, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Credits:  Original author unknown.  Dialog transcribed from a posting on YouTube.  View HERE

 

The Differences and the Similarities in the Way the Father Draws Sinners to Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The following was taken from Pastor David Muray's blogsite HeadHeartHand

 Differences in the Father’s Drawing
 1. Different ages: The Holy Spirit works on young hearts and old hearts. However, the majority are younger as their hearts and wills have not grown so hard and so skillful in resisting the Spirit.

2. Different time periods: Sometimes the drawing can take place in a few minutes; sometimes it can be over many years.

3. Different forces: The Holy Spirit is sometimes “violent” (e.g. Saul of Tarsus), but often gentle (e.g. Lydia).

4. Different expectations: Sometimes we are not surprised by who the Spirit draws to Christ. They have looked promising for many years and we have been almost waiting for them. At other times, the Holy Spirit picks out the least predictable and most unexpected.

5. Different means: The Holy Spirit may use a sermon, a Scripture reading, a tract, a book, a witness, even an argument to draw sinners to Christ.

Similarities in the Father’s Drawing

 1. The Holy Spirit uses the Word: This is not some kind of mystical mid-air experience. There’s a mystery to it all right, but it’s always rooted in the Scriptures. It’s not just some fizz of feelings or emotional manipulation.

2. The Holy Spirit works through the mind: This is a rational experience. The Holy Spirit persuades and reasons with the sinner using the Scriptures. He explains his situation, exposes his need, exhibits him the solution, outlines what he has to do, encourages him with promises, beats excuses, and overcomes obstacles. “And they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” (John 6:45)

3. The Holy Spirit changes the will’s direction by changing its passions: As the reasons and arguments pile up, the will begins to change from South to North; it is turned 180 degrees and re-directed. It was going against God by going away from God. But now it is going towards God with love and happy expectation.
You cannot experience the Holy Spirit without emotion. Although He works through the mind upon the will, it is not an emotionless experience. There can often be deep and powerful emotions as the sinner’s mind, will, and heart are changed. There is usually a painful sorrow as the sinner looks back at his past resistance. There is joy over the grace extended and the forgiveness enjoyed.

4. The Holy Spirit draws to Jesus: The Holy Spirit directs the sinner’s attention to Jesus Christ in particular. It is not a general theism that is spoken of here. The Father draws to Jesus. We come to Christ. We see a beauty in Him we never saw before. We develop a fascination, even an obsession, with Him. We are more than attracted to Christ: we are impelled. And when we come, he receives. He has never cast our or driven away any sinner drawn to Him by the Holy Spirit (John 6:37).

5.  The Holy Spirit always wins: Although there is a general, or common, work of the Holy Spirit that is successfully resisted, when the Holy Spirit sets out to save, He saves. He has never been defeated. A big fat zero is in His losses column. “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (John 6:37). We’re not talking possibility or probability but certainty. And we are not talking just of coming but of staying…forever.
As the Shorter Catechism (31) put it: “Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.”

Franklin Graham trying to legitimize Mormonism as Christianity.

Franklin Graham: Mormonism Will Never Be Labeled a ‘Cult’ Again...

By: Heather Clark

During a recent interview with CNN, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), advised that a page that was removed from the ministry website last month following Graham’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, which classified Mormonism as a cult, is “not going to come back.”

The page, entitled, “What is a Cult?” read, “A cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the Biblical message of the Christian faith. It is very important that we recognize cults and avoid any involvement with them. Cults often teach some Christian truth mixed with error, which may be difficult to detect.”

It then listed among three bullet points on how to identify a cult, “They do not adhere solely to the sixty-six books of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. They add their ‘special revelations’ to the Bible and view them as equally authoritative.”

“Some of these groups are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists, Scientologists and others,” the web page stated.................

 “What is going on here?” asked John McArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California, in response to Graham’s comments. “It’s an almost inconceivable contradiction that a man who believes that has raised millions and millions and millions of dollars to gather people from all over the world into large stadiums and tell them they need to believe in Jesus Christ.”

“[Mormonism] is a damning religious system,” McArthur said. “It is so far from Christianity that it is more like paganism than Christianity.”

“Evangelicalism is in a desperate situation, and that is made manifest by its inability to distinguish who is a true Christian. We have abandoned any clear understanding of what it means to really be saved,” he asserted. “We have no right to redefine [salvation] in our own terms in order to be be popular or in order to be accepted. True and historic Christianity has never been confused about what it means to be a Christian.”

read the entire article here

A "must see" video describing the trip back to the Sawi tribe by the first pioneer missionary..

http://vimeo.com/pioneersusa/neverthesame




this is the country Trevor Johnson currently serves as a missionary...check out our website for more info on Trevor sovereigngracebaptistchurch.net

How I Absorbed Three Punches and Stood Up Anyway

There is a very good article by Pastor Tom Chantry at his blog site...I'll give you a teaser but check out the entire article

 

 

Although I’ve been worried about this election for months, only in the aftermath did I realize that I never really thought our country would re-elect a President who has been such an abject failure by any and every measure.  It just didn’t seem possible that we would do so, and so at some level I didn’t expect it at all.  As the results rolled in, I found myself reeling, unable to take in the enormity of what has happened to our nation.  I scarcely slept, unable to stop running through the implications of the disaster.  I was, to put it mildly, knocked down and stunned.

But God is gracious, and eventually I slept, and this morning I find myself back up off the mat.  Looking back, I can see what it was that took me so by surprise.  I allowed myself to think too highly of my country – to imagine that the American optimists were right and that there is something exceptional and wonderful in the American spirit which pulls us through the worst crises.  That smugness was knocked out of me by a series of blows as I realized anew that we are a culture of sin, a culture of stupidity, and a culture under judgment – none of which really surprises me in the light of day.  Those blows absolutely leveled me last night, but today I’m standing.  Here’s why:

Read the entire article here:   chantrynotes