Thanks to the folks who gave feedback on my recent sermon draft that was posted - the post has been deleted as it no longer really reflects the substance of what I’ll be saying, but the feedback was useful.

Merry Christmas!

Dr. Bill Bright founder of Campus Crusade for Christ Died July 19th, 2003.

Dr. Bill Bright founded Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951 and vowed to “present my body a living sacrifice, utterly abandoned to God. By this commitment, I will that God’s perfect will shall find complete expression in my life; and I offer myself in all sobriety to be expendable for Christ.” Bill studied at Princeton and Fuller Seminaries.

In 1979, he commissioned the JESUS film (a feature-length documentary on the life of Christ) which has been viewed by more than 5.1 billion people in 234 countries, with translations into 786 languages. I believe these statistics demonstrate its claim to being “the most widely viewed, as well as most widely translated, film in history“.

The well known booklet “The Four Spiritual Laws” was written by Bill in 1956. Since then it’s been translated into around 200 languages and 2.5 billion copies distributed, making it the most widely disseminated religious booklet in history.

In short and skipping over a lot of the details the 4 spiritual laws say (emphasis as in the original),

1. God LOVES you and offers a wonderful PLAN for your life.
2. Man is SINFUL and SEPARATED from God. Thus he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
3. Jesus Christ is God’s ONLY provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually RECEIVE Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.

Some might argue that this is a gross oversimplification of what it means to begin a faith walk with Christ but I would contend that it greatly depends on your worldview as to whether this accusation is true or not. More to come - I feel a series of blog posts brewing.

We had our final for this quarter of VLI, covering The Pentateuch and Former Prophets and Healing II: Emotional and Demonic Afflictions. I’ve settled into a definite pattern for taking the exams now and it seems to work - go in and tackle the longest answers on both papers first, work back to the short (fill in the blanks) answers on both papers, then finally whip through the multi-choice questions as dessert. It left me feeling like I actually knew something as I know that the grades for the multi-choice questions are always higher - my brain can pull out some amazing trivia when prompted with another item. My brain is wired for mnemonic recall - just play the game “Tribond” with me to find out!

Speaking of games, we picked up two the other day. Bitin’ Off Hedz is simply crazy

Game Synopsis: Everyone starts at the lowest point on the island, and races around to the top. There are mud pits to slow you down, a big gap to jump over, and lots of rocks to pick up along the way. You can spend your rocks to roll again, or you can throw them at other players to knock them off the track. When you land on another dinosaur, you get to bite off their head. The board is dino-huge!

The more serious game that looks just as fun is Risk 2210 AD (with detailed info about the game also available online). I agree with them where they say

Of all the improvements in Risk 2210 A.D., the turn limit probably has the most sweeping effect on the game. The war lasts five turns. Whoever controls the most territory at the end of the fifth turn, wins. Seizing a continent and furiously sandbagging the borders is no longer a viable strategy.

With only five turns in which to conquer ground, every one of them is crucial. Players almost never get eliminated — there’s not enough time to beat them down to nothing, and there are cards and space stations to bolster their defenses.

This one change alone would have revolutionized the game. Combined with the other new rules — cards, sea and lunar territories, commanders, and energy — Risk 2210 A.D. becomes a significantly different, new, more challenging, and more interesting game.

Now what I need are some willing victims other players to play them! Contact me…