Today is the 1st Sunday of Advent. It's presence was very well-stated throughout the day, through certain means such as my pastor and various blogs.

So, Thanksgiving came and went, and it was a glorious day of feasting and fellowship (relatives had previously penetrated my principality earlier in the week). Wednesday and Thursday, I was accompanied by the thoughts of thankfulness and joy. To explain the last sentence, even though we are thankful every day of our lives (at least we should be), it is wonderful to have special events (such as holidays) to be reminded. Dr. Johnson said, "People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed."

To finish off this post, I thought a link to Pastor Leithart's baptismal exhortation on Advent.
Oh, and I apologize if it may seem that I swallowed a thesaurus. Sometimes, you get the delightful feeling that you want to write a certain way, and that's just how it is.

Have a blessed week everyone!

~Bradley

P.S. Advent link

A Small Adjustment

This morning in church, my pastor (Jason Farley) was noting that contrary
to some people's belief (including mine), we, the modern day church are not in exile.
He stated that the old Israel in Babylon were the exiled ones (in Babylon), and that
our age is post-resurrection with Jesus Christ, our Cyrus of Persia having freed us and led
us home, so that we can now restore worship. But just because we are free once again doesn't
mean our load is light. The American church has much work to do to properly worship God.

Post Election and the American Church

Okay, so Obama was elected. All I have to say to the complainers is
that McCain isn't any better and certainly should not be granted "the lesser of two evils" title, as many have chosen to bestow him with!

Let's face it. The American church has been in a rut for a long period of time.
Many church's liturgies have been adapted and reduced to be a seeker-friendly worship service
that incorporates cliché contemporary rock music with no incorporation of confession of sins
or communion ("but we have it once a year!")
Because of our sins, we have been and are under judgement by God. As usual, the Bible has something to say about this. Deuteronomy 28 tells us about obedience and sin, and what we reap from our actions.

Deuteronomy 28: 1-14
"1And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

2And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.

3Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.

4Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

5Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.

6Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

7The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.

8The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

9The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.

10And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.

11And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

12The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.

13And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them

14And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them."

Deuteronomy 28: 25, 36, 43-44

" 25The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth."

"36The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone."

"43The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.

44He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail."

In verses 1-14, we see how richly and abundantly God blesses us when we love Him and keep His commandments. Contrasting that, the following selections makes it very clear how the only thing sin reaps is sorrow, death, and destruction. Instead of of winning battles, we flee before our enemies. We have served idols. In the high positions of government, there are many pagans, but the Christians are un-exalted and in lower positions. We are underneath our foes, and un-prosperous, while their head is on top of us.

Another example presents itself in Leviticus 26 (I will only show several verses this time).

Leviticus 26: 7-8

" 7And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

8And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword."

Leviticus 26:17

" 17And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you."

Unfortunate for you, the reader, and fortunately for me, I get to go to bed now. I'll try to get a few more posts in before Friday, as that signifies the arrival of Thanksgiving relatives, and the start of feasting and fellowship. I hope you enjoyed the start of this short series and look forward to the forthcoming ones.

God bless!

~Bradley

Here is a link to a New York Times article I found on static stretching and why it is
bad for you. Stretching - The Truth

After reading it, I sure know now how to start and end my workouts!

~Bradley

RSS and All That Good Stuff...

So, I finally made the switch to using RSS, after I recently realized how much extra time it took me to open and navigate websites for the desired content with Firefox.

The feed reader I am using is Liferea (see? I started using the fancy links just like I said!).

Oh, I also forgot to mention that a few months ago, I switched to Ubuntu. ^.^
If you couldn't already tell, I absolutely love it. The speed, customization, excellent features, security,
and other things combine to make it a great operating system (though I am curious to see how Windows 7 turns out, it may turn out to beat Vista).
One gripe I had (a very typical one that all users encounter at some time or another) was that of missing Windows applications, though thankfully a fair bit of my applications (Firefox, Blender, Gmail) are cross-platform meaning that they are designed with a high level of compatibility to be able to run on multiple platforms with a similar user experience. The main one that I lacked was Adobe Photoshop, because I just can't stand Gimp through all the times I have tried it. Instead of telling you all the details, let's just say that it now works through CrossOver with minor glitches, making one very happy Linux user.

My eyes are starting to get a heavy sensation in them, signalling that I most likely need
to go to bed.
Good night and God bless!

~Bradley (I love this little symbol, it must have been made for blog signatures, aside from the secondary purpose of pulling down consoles in games).

Up, the next Pixar film that I am highly anticipating just released their 2nd trailer on Apple.com.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/up/
(Yes, I know; I don't use HTML tags to make fancy links, maybe I will sometime soon).

~Bradley

Following the Tour

Recently, Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens took a short tour along parts of the East Coast,
promoting their fairly-new book, "Is Christianity Good For the World?". Here are Nathan Wilson's writings that document each day.
The three links go in order from day 1-3.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/octoberweb-only/144-52.0.html
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/novemberweb-only/145-12.0.html
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/novemberweb-only/145-23.0.html

God bless,

~Bradley

A Well-Made Point

In Mere Christianity, (chapter The 'Cardinal Virtues') C.S. Lewis talks about the 7 main virtues related to morality, 4 of which are the cardinal virtues (cardinal coming from a Latin word meaning door hinge, i.e. virtues off which people pivot). Out of these 4, one is temperance.

"Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened 'Temperance,' it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as 'intemperate' as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals."

There is not much more to say. How I love this wonderful book!

~Bradley

Equality

Yesterday, I was writing answers to my geography questions and amidst a certain one, typed something like "he would *insert action here*"; my automatic response was to quickly erase the line and replace it with "he or she would (you know the rest)". A short time after, it occurred to me how modern culture makes changes in ways we sometimes do not even realize, whether it be writing a simple "equal" answer or even just certain responses that our brain adapts to using.

Now, you may object to the equality part and say that it was just common sense to put in "he or she", and that can work; it's just that the thought in my head immediately said "you should change that, someone may read that and wonder why you didn't include both genders!" (The horror!)

It is also possible that it's just my mind being rather strange throughout school...

Methinks it's time for a shower and then bed.
Have a good Sabbath everyone (I started to type shower instead of Sabbath). *Slaps head*

~Bradley

Announcment

Presumably, this blog seems to have hit a rut in which I can't seem to post consistently. Assuming nothing extremely abnormal happens to me in the near future (dying of a heart attack, going above and beyond my sodium intake, breaking my back try to lift a tea kettle), this web-space should be nicely maintained with posting in a timely manner (imagine that!).
The real reason posts are not consistent is because at the end of the day, blogging in one way or another sinks to the bottom of my priorities, in an unintentional way. In the past month or so, I have been noting all the things I should have posted; and I am disappointed in myself that I let the ideas float away without pursuing them in the slightest bit.

Here's to future writings!

~Bradley

Intriguing Papers

On today's lunch-break, I was on LewRockwell again and came upon yet
more wonderful papers on the bailout.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul483.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/pike8.html

Interesting...

If you have been following the American economy news, you definitely noticed the canceling of the 700 billion dollar bailout. Unfortunately, the U.S. government is just alternatively pumping in money quietly, and finding new bills to pass. But still, the fact that people actually stood up and protested is a good thing, very good indeed. More in-depth articles are linked to below.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul482.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/near-death-of-state.html

Fine Food

This post is long overdue, so now is as good a time as ever to post it.
Grab a chair and come take a look in our kitchen, where I make pizza
and occasionally dessert. The pictures are located at my picture gallery,
complete with comments. http://picasaweb.google.com/Elfboy93/PizzaAndDessert8808And83108#
I would have posted the pics here but because of some problem problems, I am just keeping them in my gallery. I recommend the slideshow mode. Enjoy!

~Bradley

Sane Posts coming soon.

Everybody is mad
And Brad is sad
Post on his blog
he does not;
Into nearest smog
he hast got,
With brain not sane
his sanity doth wane.

Remain him not
Save blackened ash
To the Moon he hath got,
Asteroid hath made a smash
And gone be Brad.

Comment

An interesting thought I had after reading Genesis 3.
Satan was not a snake; though some picture-Bibles may illustrate so.

Genesis 3:14 reads "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."
Notice how He says in the curse that Satan will go on his belly through the dust? Satan had to have been a dragon, since he couldn't have already been crawling through the dust..
Looking in my dictionary, it defines "serpent" as "a creature that movies in a winding motion, has scales, etc.." Maybe it would have been better to replace serpent with dragon.

Stupid phone companies; wrecking my sweet download speeds... xD

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-38861-118.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

Maybe some time in the near future, Americans will finally realize the situation and hit
Comcast and AT&T with a big rubber mallet (or maybe a water balloon). xD

So, this is homecoming week....

Tony arrived yesterday, and Geoff and Christina are flying in today!
Yesterday, I played with Tony (some dude with big hair) and he told me a
lot about his trip; in general, it was really fun.

Dad showed me an interesting article on W-ALLE that shows amidst it's great animation,
lighting, and all the other cg stuff, there are some bad messages related to anti-capitalism
and knowledge. I can't find the analysis right now but it will be here later when I find it.

God bless!

~Bradley

Remember, remember, the 23rd of September.....

Yes! Daniel, Kristin, Patrick, and Trinity are coming out in
September again (and around the same time they did last year too). xD

Did You Know....

Republicans and democrats are really all the same. I have been on an expedition to farther my vocabulary via the dictionary, and I found it quite interesting what "Republican" and "Democrat" came up as...

Democrat: A person who believes in and upholds government by the people (think of democracy, government in which the people hold the ruling power directly or through representatives).

Republican: Having the nature or characteristic of a republic in government. Looking back at the word republic, the definition says a state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives elected.

After looking at both words, you see both are quite similar really.

There is an interesting essay I have been reading for a little while now, entitled "Our Status in America" by Randy Booth (I think that is the author). It is both good to learn about and also horrifying to learn how Lincoln single-handedly replaced the Constitution with the Roman law of old. Between our law and Justinian's codes, in many places, you find identical sections of law, like novation! Novation (from the Latin word, novatio) is the act of cancelling a debt by means of a new one. In this case, it happens when a baby is born, and a birth certificate is recorded by the county recorder, certified by the place-of-birth state, and sent to the Department of Commerce. This starts the process of turning the child's work, life, and property into just an asset of the U.S. government. The cancelling of the baby's birth certificate debt via a new one happens when they apply for benefits, whether it be a driver's license, social security, or even the post office. So then, a person created in the image of God is converted into a fiction and living collateral of the debt of the American government.

Thank you for reading,

~Bradley

Let's face it. I don't like doing weekly review on a blog, so I will only recall a few days in detail (the good ones) along with some information for general activities such as swimming and a friend coming down to stay.

On Saturday, Rachel came over for the evening and that was a lot of fun. We played Sequence, ate pudding, and had a nonsensical-type-writer-war lasting through much of the night, or at least that's how the paper described it. Oh, and we talked about good names for our Thursday meetings (most likely something involving the Trinity).

Sunday, Mr. Farley preached on Psalm 6, which is a prayer involving grief and enemies. His main point of application was that grief and joy are both real, (putting aside the grief-does-not-exist idea) but that joy completely overpowers grief because our God raised Jesus from the dead. 

Most of us went to the beach (Sebourns, our family, the Hatts, the Mcnairs, and Mrs. Martin's sister, Kendall) and delighted in the partaking of sushi (what doesn't Costco make?) and other fine foods. With myself in particular, I had some good conversations getting to know Jeff and Donny better (especially Jeff), talking with Rachel about the modern church's pre-millenial views and it's huge differences from Doug Wilson's teaching.

So, that mostly explains the weekend.

On a different note, I was surprised last week to find that Brian (an old friend) is staying with his grandparents (our neighbors) for 2 or 3 weeks, so we have been hanging out and having a good bit of fun.

Swim lessons are finishing up (the last session is on Wednesday), and they have gone really well. I have met my teacher's goals of learning the basic strokes (freestyle, backstroke, side-gliding, dolphin kick, and some strange sort of float/glide titled MAS (monkey, airplane, soldier) and also side-breathing. Mum talked to the teacher today and found out that I am ahead of my level and doing really well. I still have a little bit of trouble with MAS and the dolphin kick but most of that was resolved today (at least for one of the strokes).

One of the boys in my class, Raymond (not Rayman as I spelled it before) is really nice and we have been talking in-between swimming. Now, I only wish that we had a big pool to swim in....

Thank you for reading my post and look forward to more soon.... (sounds like an advertisement). <_<

~Bradley