Thank God! Finally FRIDAY!!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By The Book Comics, 2008, http://bythebookcomics.blogspot.com/.

**** Exhausted this week. Good Luck to everyone's Exams! ****

Interesting Facts from Bible

Many people think Bible is boring. Here are some interesting figures and answers......

Q: How many volumes are in Old Testament?
A: 39

Q: How many volumes are in New Testament?
A: 27

Q: How many chapters are in Old Testament?
A: 929

Q: How many chapters are in New Testament?
A: 260

Q: How many sections are in Old Testament?
A: 23, 214

Q: How many sections are in New Testament?
A: 7,959

Q: Which volume is the longest in Old Testament? How many chapters?
A: Psalm; 150 Chapters

Q: Which volume is the longest in New Testament? How many chapters?
A: Acts; 28 Chapters

Q: Which volume is the shortest in Old Testament? How many chapters?
A: Obadiah; 21 Sections.

Q: Which volume is the shortest in New Testament? How many chapters?
A: 2 John; 13 Sections.

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Q1: Who is the first murderer on Bible?
A: Cain – Adam’s Son (Genesis 4: 1-15)

Q2: Who are the architects of the first skyscraper?
A: Clans of Noah’s Sons (Genesis 10: 32 – 11:9)

Q3: Who are the first twins?
A: Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25: 19-34)

Q4: Which city was held the first beauty pageant?
A: Susa (Esther 2: 1-18)

Q5: Who is the first shepherd?
A: Abel (Genesis 4: 2)

Q6: Who is the first drunk person?
A: Noah (Genesis 9: 20-27)

Q7: Who is the first person to see God came back to life?
A: Mary Magdalene (John 20: 1-18)

Q8: Who is the first Christian in Africa?
A: Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8: 26-40)

Q9: Who is the first Christian died for God?
A: Stephen (Acts 6: 8 – 7: 60)

Q10: Who are the first team to report the good news to God?
A: the Shepherds and the Angels (Luke 2: 8-20)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: The contents are excerpted and summarized from the article of ‘InterestingBible”. For full article, please refers to http://hi.baidu.com/%BD%F0%CA%D6%B1%DB/blog/item/550c18fbc00ed561034f5688.html.

What is Bible?

*** What is Bible? ***

Bible: God's Words

Bible Timothy 3: 16

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,"

2 Peter 1: 20-21

"Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

Psalm 12: 6

"And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver reined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times."

Bible is the scripture of God, which is something God want to tell men. Sometimes God will talk with men directly; sometimes God put his thought inside of the crowd. Bible consists both old and new testaments, consisting 66 volumes in total - from Genesis to Revelation, lasting over 1600 years. Bible was written by over 40 different people. Some of them are emperor, shepherd, fisherman, doctor, scholar and other ordinary people. However, from Genesis to Revelation, volumes are connected with each other that construct a complete information integration. Furthermore, all people or objects that appear on Bible are consistent and harmonious. Christians said that no other books would be on the same benchmark as Bible because Bible is God's words.

Bible: Agreement between God and Man

Exodus 34:27

"The Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel'."

Hebrews 8:10

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people."

Bible is an agreement between God and men. In the Old testament, we see God made agreement with Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua and David. Every agreement was made in accordance with the previous agreement and extended it. Those are God gave to us - fate, promise and accountability.

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Postscript: I have run this blog for a while and read quite a few Bible verses and stories. To ask the question 'what is Bible?' is a little bit late. But today, I would like to summarize what Bible is after reading of Zhou's article. For Zhou's article, please refers to http://zzpj.bloghome.cn/posts/47154.html.

Philosophy of Bible 2 - Human's Nature

The series of 'Philosophy of Bible' are the summary from Ge's article (2008). After reading the article, I try to drop down some ideas I think is important. The original article please refers to http://article.hongxiu.com/a/2008-2-18/2553664.shtml.
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Bible Genesis 2: 15-17

"The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take cared of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"

Genesis 2:25

"The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."

Genesis 3:6

"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. "

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Based on the verses above, we are aware that God finished the creation of man, and then let them work in Eden and take care of the garden. Apparently, the nature of human embraces no evil. Man doesn't have shame and moral. Man just obeyed God's words and lived. Hence, we can conclude that the nature of human is kindness.

However, Eve didn't obey God's rule. From it, we can see the 'greed' from human. She saw "the fruit of the tree was good for food" -- greedy for food; "pleasing to the eye" -- greedy for aesthetics feeling; and "desirable for gaining wisdom" -- greedy for wisdom. then "she took some and ate it" -- greed made her forgot what God told her. Also, Eve gave the fruit to Adam to eat as well. She did it wrong and she let Adam wrong as well.

Therefore, human has a good basis because of the nature of us, but also has appetence to go evil.

A Chat with a Christian 4

"Why the LORD GOD is the only God? Also, the universe might be created by someone, but why must your God? Why not Buddhist or others?"

This question I asked Deepa (a Christian from CIF) before as well, which is always asked because I still haven't get answer that make sense to me. I asked the question to Ryan too.
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Me: If God exists,it must be all Gods exist for every single religion.

Ryan: No, all the other religions besides Christianity are wrong, they have false Gods that don't exist ... my proof for this is this: all the world religions the concept of sin and that humans have sinned, but instead of having a Saviour. They say, just make sure you do more good things than bad things then you will be alright, but that doesn't make sense .... that would make God corrupt. You see, if I'm standing in a courtroom and I murdered someone, and I say to the judge "Hey judge, I know I did that crime, but since then I've never done it again and I've also done all these good things such as giving money to the poor and helping people. Can't you just let me go free?" Will the judge let me go free? No he won't. In the same way God can't let you go free if you have done good things. So we know that God cannot compromise his justice, he cannot be corrupted. all the 'gods' in the other religions are corrupt because their god is not just. But the God of Christianity is true because He upholds his justice yet shows his love at the same time by sending the punishment upon his Son (Jesus) instead of the guilty sinner. So, you are either going to satisfy his justice if you die and go to Hell .... or if Jesus took it on the cross for you.

You have a cross. What would you want ... Heaven or Hell? You must Repent (turn from your sins) and trust Jesus that he died on the cross for you and you will go to Heaven when you die.

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Well, Ryan is an absolutely good persuader and he always can apply practical examples to convince you. But one thing, actually, he does not know much about other religions. In fact, I think other religions must have something right that make so many people to follow. Ryan's logic is from Bible. Even the saying of 'sending 40 different people as instrument for writing God's words', even Bible is logically make sense to some people. But from my perspective, it is still hard to prove it is true and correct to me.

Philosophy of Bible 1 - Human's Attribute

The series of 'Philosophy of Bible' are the summary from Ge's article (2008). After reading the article, I try to drop down some ideas I think is important. The original article please refers to http://article.hongxiu.com/a/2008-2-18/2553664.shtml.
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Genesis 2:7
"The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Genesis 1:26
"Then God said, 'let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'"

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God formed man by dust and breathed into man's nostrils. That is why human differs from plants and animals because human have the spirit from God. Suppose without the dust, God's spirit does not have a vehicle; then human only have body but no spirit. In that case, we are unable to live. Therefore, we can conclude that man is a combination of material and spirit. Additionally, as I mentioned in proceeding post, we have the image from God and, Thus, we have personality. Furthermore, as we have the spirit from God, human have godhood.

Human is a combination of material and spirit; a combination of clay and soul; and a combination of humanity and godhood. Therefore, the attribute of human is how to maintain a relationship between material and spirit; body and soul; humanity and deity, in order to keep them balance.

A Chat with a Christian 3

One day, I met Ryan again and had a chat with him. The questions and answers are below.

Me: Hey, Ryan, have u even seen Jesus??

Ryan: No, I don't need either.

Me: If u have never seen it, why you are so sure he is right there? To see is to believe!

Ryan: It's logical to know God exists.

Me: It's a bit abstract.

Ryan: There must be a first cause, also known as an uncaused cause. This is because all things have a beginning, and are caused by something. For example, a tree was caused by a seed, which caused by another tree, and so on and so on. But in the end, there must be something that exists that was not caused by anything. This is because there cannot be an infinite length causal chain – that is, something causing something causing something, must have a beginning to that chain – and nothing can cause itself. That then concludes that there must be a first cause and that first cause must be infinite; it must be God.

The fact that the universe exists must mean that there is something outside of it that was the cause of it. Without this first cause, the universe would simply not exist.

Me: Okay, first cause, but you cannot explain who make God in accordance with your logic.

Ryan: To explain it a different way, logic says that for us finite beings to exist, there must be something infinite. If God was not infinite, the question then must be asked is, who created God? If someone says that god was created by another god who is finite, then who created that god? It turns into an infinite regress. But in the end, there must be something that is infinite and is outside of time. The Bible says that there is just one God who is infinite.

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It is clear that Ryan has strong belief on Bible. I am not sure wether he is a good Christian or not (I think he is), but I am sure he is a good arguer. LOL.......