Thursday, April 23, 2009

God of Nations

Words by Thomas Bracken, music by John J. Woods
English Lyrics Maori Lyrics Maori Lyrics Translated

God of nations! at Thy feet
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our Free Land.
Guard Pacific's triple star,
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand

E Ihowa Atua,
O nga iwi matou ra
Ata whakarongona;
Me aroha noa
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau to atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa

O Lord, God,
Of all people
Listen to us,
Cherish us
May good flourish,
May your blessings flow
Defend Aotearoa

Men of ev'ry creed and race
Gather here before Thy face,
Asking Thee to bless this place,
God defend our Free Land.
From dissension, envy, hate,
And corruption guard our State,
Make our country good and great,
God defend New Zealand.

Ona mano tangata
Kiri whero, kiri ma,
Iwi Maori Pakeha,
Repeke katoa,
Nei ka tono ko nga he
Mau e whakaahu ke,
Kia ora marire
Aotearoa

Let all people,
Red skin, white skin
Mäori, Päkehä
Gather before you
May all our wrongs, we pray,
Be forgiven
So that we might say long live
Aotearoa

Peace, not war, shall be our boast,
But, should foes assail our coast,
Make us then a mighty host,
God defend our Free Land.
Lord of battles in thy might,
Put our enemies to flight,
Let our cause be just and right,
God defend New Zealand.

Tona mana kia tü!
Tona kaha kia ü;
Tona rongo hei pakü
Ki te ao katoa
Aua rawa nga whawhai
Nga tutü a tata mai;
Kia tupu nui ai
Aotearoa

May it be forever prestigious,
May it go from strength to strength,
May its fam spread far and wide,
Let not strife
Nor dissention ensue,
May it ever be great
Aotearoa

Let our love for Thee increase,
May Thy blessings never cease,
Give us plenty, give us peace,
God defend our Free Land.
From dishonour and from shame
Guard our country's spotless name
Crown her with immortal fame,
God defend New Zealand.

Waiho tona takiwa
Ko te ao marama;
Kia whiti tona ra
Taiawhio noa.
Ko te hae me te ngangau
Meinga kia kore kau;
Waiho i te rongo mau
Aotearoa

Let its territory
Be ever enlightened
Throughout the land
Let envy and dissension
Be dispelled,
Let peace reign
Over Aotearoa

May our mountains ever be
Freedom's ramparts on the sea,
Make us faithful unto Thee,
God defend our Free Land.
Guide her in the nations' van,
Preaching love and truth to man,
Working out Thy Glorious plan,
God defend New Zealand.

Tona pai me toitü
Tika rawa, ponu pü;
Tona noho, tana tü;
Iwi no Ihowa.
Kaua mona whakama;
Kia hau te ingoa;
Kia tü hei tauira;
Aotearoa

Let its good features endure,
Let righteousness and honesty prevail
Among the people of God
Let it never be ashamed,
But rather, let its name be known
Thereby becoming the model to emulate
Aotearoa

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A dangerous lie

Premillennial dispensational eschatology is committed to portraying the world as inherently incurable and in moral decline. Only the following series of eschatologically inevitable events can reverse this decline: the (somehow) secret Rapture, followed by the Great Tribulation against the State of Israel, followed by the return of Christ to set up an international Christian bureaucracy.

More than this: all evidence of moral decline had been harnessed for decades to prove the inevitability of the fastapproaching Rapture of the saints to heaven. The archetype — the literary model — was Hal Lindey's best-selling book, The Late, Great Planet Earth (1970). Gary North


It is told to us over and over in books and movies like "The Late, Great Planet Earth", "A Distant Thunder" and "Left Behind" series. They foster an unbiblical mindset in the Christian community. Christians are no longer building the Kingdom of God, but they are digging fox holes trying to hold out 'until Jesus comes.'

Although there are some hopeful exceptions, generally there are no long-term Christian movements for establishing mercy institutions Christians once were famous for; institutions such as hospitals, universities, cathedrals with their ministries of mercy to immigrants, indigents, recovery centers for prostitutes, Christian schools, with an historically Christian and orthodoxically Biblical view of the world and of the future. We now slap a Band-Aid on something and call it a ministry thinking we really are doing a work for God. There is no longer an unabashed, decidedly Christian nurturing of leaders, spokesmen, researchers, poets, historians, educators, pastors and preachers, and medical practitioners, etc., as there were in previous generations of Christians. Mostly we are content to think in terms of street-witnessing for the next 3 or 4 years since we are afraid that is all the time we have left. Most Rapture-enthusiasts have a hard time trying to finish 4 years of college.

When we finally wake up after 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and Jesus hasn't raptured us out of this evil world of Satan's rule, and we haven't gotten married and/or had children, because "who wants to bring kids into this world when they might miss the rapture and go through the Great Tribulation"; after years of this,...we find that we have wasted many opportunities for blessings, and we have failed to build a godly legacy for the generations to come.

Let us return to the Bible and rebuild our definitions of Family, Church and State according to the principles and precepts outlined therein. No more of the pragmatism/"she'll be right" attidtude that has gotten us into this mess.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Origins

The title of this blog is in Dutch - it is the words spoken by Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.

"Hier sta ik, ik kan niet anders... " translated as: "Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise..."


Here us the quote in full:

"Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason - I do not accept
the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other -
my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant
anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.
Amen."


Layout changes

Please bear with me as I play around with Blogger and the layout of the blog - when I start fiddling there is no telling what I might do!

Africa Needs God... an athiest speaks.

I found the following article from the Times Online fascinating, read and ponder.


As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris


Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
Background

* British missionaries plead guilty to sedition in Gambia

* Soulgasms of the Christian Right

* Have Pentecostalism, will travel

* PROFILE: warlord who kills in name of Christ

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Babylon, Agrarianism, and the Military-Industrial Complex

This article was first published by Chris Ortiz - Faith for all of life April 8 2006, it was a turning point in my journey towards a more agrarian way of thinking and living.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah 2:4
Warfare proceeds from the heart of man according to James 4:1. It is sin, and the sinful pursuits of men, that spurs the national conflicts in world history. Whereas God intended an agrarian-based society, tyrants converted that productivity into the tools of war. Although 2,700 years have passed since Isaiah penned his prophecy, this manipulation by the oligarchy remains the central strategy of elitist dominion. Orwell's 1984 suggests this very thing:
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living...

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare...

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed...

In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population.
Modern warfare is reliant upon technology, and technology is consumed by the incessant war project; and the war project is central to maintaining the dominion of sinful man. This is why modern man relishes in his technological achievements -- they are the primary evidence of man's developing omniscience. In this sense, there are many similarities to the nature of God and the divine attributes that oligarchs seek for themselves:

God is omnipotent (all-powerful), and man seeks this power through imperialism.
God is omniscient (all-knowing), and man seeks this through technology.
God is benevolent, and man seeks this through socialistic control of the economy.
God is sovereign, and man seeks predestinarian control through central planning.

In addition, the growing surveillance society of Big Brother is also a feeble attempt at matching a god-like ability to monitor every man:
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Proverbs 15:3
Restraining Technology
God surveys what man has done and is doing (Gen. 11:5). The people are one in this new world order; their language is one and now they are creating a world government to play god over mankind (v.6). With such a power over mankind, "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (v.6). Total power will mean total government and control. When men play god, they primarily seek to dominate other men. They then turn science and knowledge into strategies of control in every sphere of life and thought. (R.J. Rushdoony, Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Genesis, p.110)
The Tower of Babel was the original manifestation of a unified statist system. The sin of their hearts became the "sin made flesh" when they said, "let us build." They would use the technology given by God to replace the throne of God in history. Yet, babylonian man was viciously humbled in a surprising counter move by Almighty God. He assaulted their highest technology--the one technology they could not manipulate: He confounded their language.

The result, according to Gen. 11:8, was the scattering abroad of man and "the leaving off to build the city." God frustrated the project of man by restraining his technology. While man had the physical means (tools and materials) to build the city, he could not succeed without the God-controlled element of speech. This basic technology trumped all other technologies.

Agrarianism and Technology

Technology is inescapable. It's apparent in the simplest and most complex of systems. Technology is not a cell phone or a television. Technology is an invisible attribute hidden in the mind of God that He transfers to man in history:
When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?
When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin?
Does he not plant wheat in its place,
barley in its plot,
and spelt in its field?
His God instructs him
and teaches him the right way.
Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cummin with a stick.
Grain must be ground to make bread;
so one does not go on threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it,
his horses do not grind it.
All this also comes from the LORD Almighty,
wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.
(Isaiah 28:24-29)
God instructs man by His sovereign illumination. The error is when man assumes that he has "discovered" a technology. He hasn't. "God instructs him and teaches him the right way" (v.26). This idea presupposes an ethical restraint upon man and his technological pursuits. There is only so far God will allow man to go. However, we must also restrain ourselves so as to avoid aimless inventions that merely facilitate slothfulness, indulgence, and war.

I find it interesting that when Isaiah prophesied (chapter 2) of the glorious kingdom he described it in terms of a repentance in technology: swords are made into plowshares, and spears are converted into pruninghooks. Converted hearts lead to converted technology. This is ably demonstrated by the present emphasis upon agrarianism. The movement is emblematic of a righteous "restraint" upon the abuses of technology and the sin it inspires. All to say, the fulfilled kingdom may appear more Amish than the steel and stone of Huxley's Brave New World.

The same has often been said about hunting -- old-school rocker Ted Nugent is one of the most outspoken advocates of this idea. Christians are rediscovering a lost world, by discarding much of the plastic society and the cultural control grid of corporate advertising. By removing their children from public schools, and by disengaging from certain social tentacles, today's Christian can better taste the potency of God's creation.

The issue here is not isolationism -- far from it. It is a counter-revolution to an exclusively institutional and industrial existence. It is a self-imposed restraint upon the use of certain technology, and the adoption of older technology that is pure and God-sanctioned.

The new Tower of Babel is a vast system contrived and built by humanistic man, and is intended to have dominion over every area of life. We, as modern Christians, are plugged into this system. We should always be looking for ways to "unplug" so as to circumvent its control in our lives. Educating our children is the first step. Removing ourselves from the neo-babylonian churches is next. These mega-wonders of institutional worship are drenched in technology, and serve as faithful ambassadors of the state.

I find other movements, such as agrarianism, as helpful to the cause of Christ. I also see a helpful trend within the family-based churches, despite the shrills of patriarchy. My goodness, so long as sinful people are involved any system can be abused! But centering on the family helps to de-tox Christians from their slavish adherence to institutions. We can only rejoice then as faithful Christians work to decentralize a one-world order. Bureaucracy is a great opponent to the expedient application of Biblical law.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Windows Home Server (WHS)

Do you have multiple computers, with multiple "My Documents"/"My Pictures"/"My Videos"/.... do you lie awake at night worrying about how to backup each of these computers so you don't loose all those important documents/photos/videos/mp3s?



Let me introduce you to my best friend (BFF) - Windows Home Server - it does what servers do best - looks after all your data, whether it is on one computer or several. It becomes a central repository for backups, shared documents/photos/videos/etc. Each home cmoputer that connects to the home server is fully backed up every night, the server itself can be backed up to an external USB hdd. Running low on disk space - add a USB hdd and add it to the storage pool and windows home server will ensure your data is stored in multiple locations, just in case of failure! It will take your dog for a walk... not yet but one day...



Having been involved with servers since before Windows NT 4.0, this add-on to Windows 2003 server is the best thing to hit the home computer user ever! note - if you are/were a server admin you will need to un-learn some habits but once you get used to the admin console it is great!


The best part about it is the remote access - from anywhere in the world I can access my home server admin console or any home computer running XP Pro or Vista Business/Ultimate using remote desktop - it is very easy to configure and once setup it just works.

Green Tomato - UPDATE

Thanks to the good frost this morning, my tomatoes, zucchuini and squash are all black... and the squash had just started to flower - being self seeded I was letting nature take its course. Nature can be a fickle friend at times.

Now where did I leave my rotary hoe? That's right I don't have one, well out with the garden fork and spade this weekend it is. I love the smell of freshly tilled soil early in the morning.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The end of the industrial revolution?

In his book "Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian" - Herrick Kimball makes the following statement
I don't know how the industrial era will collapse, only that it will. My guess is that a worldwide economic crisis will be a major part of the story. It is only fitting since industrialism in all its many forms is rooted in greed and the love of money.
Considering the book is published in 2006, it is becoming apparent that he was correct with his guess and we have only seen the ramifications within the USA, just wait until it flows throughout the EU! I believe we are at the beginning of the end of the modern industrial era, how this will impact on your life will depend on where you place your trust. I place my trust in the God of the Bible, as Herrick says:
Only God knows how the demise of the industrial era will be played out. That's because He is sovereign, He knows the beginning from the end. He directs the events of history for His own purposes, primary of which is to bring glory to Himself.
Sola dei Gloria.



Conficker update

From Ars Technica:
The Conficker worm has been a hot topic for months as white hats and black hats have struggled to one-up each other. When security teams broke the randomization cypher Conficker uses and were able to predict which websites the program would target and when, Conficker.B retaliated. That version of the malware used a new encryption cypher to hide its target list (this was broken as well), and was cabable of spreading from infected to non-infected systems over office networks, shared folders, or even USB keys.
Show's over folks, move along, bring on 2999.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Green Tomatoes

Why do they not go RED? I realise there has been a change of government and I hardly expect them to go BLUE but there they are sitting on the plant, as green as the leaves and no sign of changing.

Thoughts/hints/ideas?

Conficker worm... crisis or claptrap?

Remember Y2K? Probably a distant memory of something huge that never eventuated, this will be no different.

The Lord is at work; let the people rejoice!

The world is moving into the greatest economic crisis of history. It is a religious crisis, the product of man’s efforts to play god and to control all things. For humanistic man, freedom is anathema, because it runs counter to scientific planning and control. The growing crisis is thus a religious one, and we must see it as God’s judgment on a false and rival order. The crisis must be seen as good news, as evidence that God is at war, that the wages of sin in any sphere are always death, and that every tower of Babel man erects has a common destiny, disaster and confusion. The Lord is at work; let the people rejoice.

R. J. Rushdoony
Roots of Reconstruction