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The other day, Yiliang and I were having a dispute over whether the tongues used in Charismatic churches were valid or not. He figured that since I was believing a certain article that completely refutes the need of tongues in today’s churches, he helped me a great deal about revealing something blasphemous about the New International Version(NIV) of the Holy Bible.
Sure, there’s lots of errors and stuff in many Bibles you read nowadays, and people have come up with a whole list of doctrinal errors of modern versions of Bibles(eg Amplified Bible, New King James Version, New American Standard Version, the Living Bible, etc). But this one seems pretty special – so far I haven’t seen anyone mention about this particular verse, namely Hebrews 10:26, from le ole King James Bible.
KJV: For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
NIV: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
Now, we do keep sinning every day, because we have disobeyed the 10 Commandments, God’s law for us from time to time, especially this one below:
Exodus 20:8-11 (KJV) – the 4th Commandment, keeping the Sabbath holy and not working on the Sabbath.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Reading this, it meant that you should not do any work at all on Saturdays, except relax, rest and recover. However, cooking, typing on the computer, doing your laundry is also a form of work, so we do sin according to the Law, namely the 10 Commandments and the Jewish Law(do take note that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are the 5 Books of Moses, the Jewish Law.)
In other words, having known the 10 Commandments now, and yet doing menial chores on Saturdays, we have sinned wilfully even though we know the Law. But the big question is, is the Law the Truth?
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
So, for us Christians, we do know Him, so we do know the truth. But we still continue to break God’s Law every Saturday, so what happens to us?
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death…
So does this mean that we are going to hell for sure? Without a sacrifice our sins are not pardoned, but Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from our sins once and for all, so by breaking the Law, won’t we be hellbound, since there is no more sacrifice left for us to be redeemed from our sins? This is a very big contradiction to what God has in store for us. But we do know that God does not contradict himself at all, so why is this verse telling us that we are going hellbound?
Not so, read the verse again:
Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
Read John 14:6 again. Jesus is the truth, so if we know and believe Him to be our personal Saviour, we already have received the knowledge of truth. So since Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from the horrors of going into Hell for eternity, once and for all, there is no need for any more sacrifice, since His work is already finished on the cross! Now read the NIV’s intepretation of the same verse:
If we deliberately sin after we have received the knowledge of truth, no sacrifice is left,
This tells us that we are unredeemable and condemned to be sent into Hell for eternity, whether you like it or not, because the Law demands perfection from man, yet man’s imperfection causes him to break the Law in one way or another. Is this the God that we Christians know, a God that throws every single soul into Hell for his own pleasure?
II Chronicles 30:9 …for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.
Clearly, a God that is gracious and merciful will not do such a terrible thing, so this proves that this verse as intepreted in the NIV as untrue and misleading. Friends, stick to the King James Bible as far as possible – you never know what kinds of heresies might abound within the NIV. Though I don’t really read up on the other versions myself, I personally think King James Bible is good enough for me.
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Hiya fellas. I’m back on the set. There’s just too much going on nowadays, and I didn’t think that I’d find myself so much free time blogging, like I used to back last year.
These days there’s a lot more going on after the End of Year Examinations, and we Secondary 3s are a rather choosy lot. First, we have all the exam stress, and keep lamenting at how the education in Singapore sucks(though it doesn’t). The next minute after the examinations is lamenting at having nothing better to do. Then the next thing we complain is that the teachers are too hardworking, giving us too much holiday homework(though it’s just for preparing us for the “O”Level Examinations next year).
Put two Biology lessons at the end of a Friday and a Thursday, and curses and swear words are all you get from us students. At the end of the day, everyone’s dead tired, and hungry and thirsty as stray dogs, and we sit down quietly in a freezing room full of useless boxes called computer monitors(we didn’t get to use the computers during the lesson) while squeezing the last bit of brain cell with the pupil reflex, and the anatomy of the human eye. Luckily for me, there was an incentive for all that brain-squeezing – there’s after all, hope that it will eventually come out for the “O” paper, instead of studying needless stuff.
Speaking of needless stuff, I wonder now why the school gives so many exercises on Chinese spelling and learning new phrases, when all that’s tested is the ability to correctly answer comprehension passages properly? Ah, but this is just the beginning of hard times, for there’s still another year-no, less than half a year to go-to prepare for the “O”s. Not to mention the probability that if I don’t do well, I’d be dragged into Bridging Programme… Then again, Bridging Programme is found to be very good from those who got dragged in, their grades skyrocketed. So, if only the school lets us choose to go Bridging with the weaker students, there’d probably be a slightly better outcome for the school overally, improving the average L1R5 of the school.
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881 – a film by Royston Tan, about two girls from different backgrounds who became sworn Papaya Sisters, singing at getais(song stages) at 7th lunar months. Big Papaya and Little Papaya were challenged by the Durian Sisters, who fought through singing Hokkien songs, with flashy costumes and everything they had. Eventually Durian Sisters lost and had to retire from singing in getais forever, while Little Papaya dies from lung cancer.
This show is a MUST WATCH, guys!
Why this is a must-watch(includes some must-knows)
First of all, you’ll have to know something about Singaporean Chinese culture. In the 7th month of the Chinese calendar, it’s deemed to be that the Gates of Hell are let open and all the ghosts and spirits are let loose to the earth, where they are allowed to roam as they please until the end of the month. Pretty much like having your June or December school holidays, and after that, it’s back to study. In any case, during the ghosts’ and spirits’ “holiday,” they not only need to “eat, drink and be merry,(which is done by burning incense and making offerings to the Chinese gods)” they also need some entertainment, pretty much like us needing either TV or computer games. This is where getais come in – those “good brothers” come among us living ones and watch the singers sing their hearts out to both the dead and living’s delight.
Kinda like paying your dead great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers your deep respects.
Secondly, Singapore has many Chinese dialect groups, majority of which is Hokkien, which you definitely have to pick up to truly understand the dialogue, for the Hokkiens are known for making witty jokes which only their own dialect group can understand.
Lastly, this show is so successful because it truly reflects one of the lost arts of Singapore. Without this movie, we probably wouldn’t know what a getai would be 10 years from now. The greatest achievement of this movie is to grab the attention of the audience(that is, the whole of Singapore) to once again visit those getais and give those organisers yet another job and livelihood.
Characteristics of the movie that made it the current blockbuster
Now, for the movie itself. The music used for the movie are used at just the right timing, and Hokkien dialogue totally fits in to Singaporean culture itself. Story touching enough to make people cry at the end, where Little Papaya dies of lung cancer. Moreover, the following scenes are accompanied with a beautifully and meaningfully written song, One Half, which speaks of how when two people share something, when one person takes a half, they keep their friendship forever, and as long as possible.
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Hiya readers. It’s yet a long time ever since I last blogged. Looking back at this blog, it seems to have quite died down for quite some time.
But now it’s time to clear the dusty blog up and spice things up a bit!
These days, it ain’t pretty much normal. I often find myself clearing up every single part of my study table, chucking stuff like it’s free of charge, and that. From what I’ve noticed from my classmates’ reactions, it looks like I’m getting noisier. What’s happening?
Okay, scrap that. Anyways, there was pretty much nothing these days except to study, study and study. I don’t really get to do much of anything else, let alone type this post. I apologise if this post was a tad too short, probably the study for Final Year Examinations took up much of my time. But that ain’t gonna deter me. From now, I’m gonna try my best to update this blog at least once a week – but I most probably can’t for the whole of September and October, due to my study for the Final Year Exams. Wish me luck!
And oh, those creators of Granado Espada were smart enough to deter my way through the game: Granado Espada is now P2P(pay-to-play)! Doesn’t make much of a difference when compared to World of Warcraft, said some of my fellow players. Yea, honestly it’s still pretty much the same in terms of gameplay, high level of beautiful graphics, and now, even the need of subscription to play this game. It’s really disappointed me greatly, but a blessing in disguise, no doubt. I was getting bored of that game anyway, and the need to study all the more justifies its need of subscription. Heh.
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Heya guys, long time no blog.
Well, these days aren’t that fun after all – I’ve recently got involved in many group projects to work on. I say, I say, group work sure is great, but we sure could use some more time on studying for the Final Year Exams than doing all these group stuff. Honestly, I don’t mind if we do those projects AFTER the exams, ‘cos there’s all the mumbo-jumbo about doing well for exams, and projects and CCAs taking up the time, etc etc.
In other words, I meant that that the timing was wrong, though the purpose is justified.
Okay, so I had the liberty to choose whether to go to the Cornerstone church cell group outing or the Guitar Ensemble outing today. I chose the Guitar Ensemble one. Nevermind those Cornerstone people, paying $25 is just way off my allowance. Steamboat over BBQ: I chose BBQ. However, I didn’t really get what I wanted-they went for Pizza Hut, saying that there’s just not enough people going for the movie outing that they planned for.
In any case, we went watching Jay Chou’s “The Secret”. The opening scene wasn’t good. Too boring, only being spiced up with some corny conversation that’s supposed to make you laugh. I played along. The movie wasn’t what I expected, until the climax of the show. Time travel(!?) of a young lady, Rain, 20 years into the present, and then back to 20 years in the past. Then back and forth. Fell in love with Jay. Jay kissed another girl, mistaking her for Rain, and she gets really heartbroken. Then all hell broke loose. Then realised that she wasn’t supposed to exist in the future, ‘cos it ended up she died in the past. Then discovered her passage into the present, and went back, almost being killed by a metal ball used to demolish the building.
Exciting, though it’s really complicated now that I’ve added in the details. Daring feat, but what can I say? You can’t do that in real life-that’d get you killed, so all we see are merely computer graphics. “And they lived happily ever after” was what the ending implied. Ridiculous, but exciting nonetheless. Just watch the action going on.
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Already I can experience the harmful effects of global warming in Singapore.
Look at the incessant rains, usually it’s the hot season here in Singapore during this time of the year. And look, everyone’s falling sick. First it was my sister catching the common cold, flu and fever. Then it’s Uncle Teck. Then now, it’s almost everybody I know has fallen sick because of the weather. Look at Jonathan. He’s fallen sick too. Probably caught the cold too. Anyways, is it just me, or is the climate in Singapore changing drastically due to global warming and possibly the big ozone hole a few kilometres above ground? Damn these irresponsible chums doing harm to the global environment in the name of money…
At least that gives me good reason enough to go environmentally-friendly from now on. Look at the weather forecast today:
From: http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/SNXX0006.html, on the weather today. (28/07/2007)
Nowadays, we don’t switch on our air-con anymore. It’s just too damned cold here. Lucky for me, this good ol’ CPU underneath the computer desk is running on full efficiency, so the temperature last registed 43ºC when I checked the other time. I have 2 fans blowing into the CPU box, so I now get to enjoy some warm air that’s nearing 28ºC. Thanks, Uncle Yiye, for installing those two fans there! Central Processing Unit-cum-electrical radiator. Marvellous.
And hey, the computer ain’t so slow nowadays. Probably because of the high temperature within the box?
Sigh, and John’s visit to Anglican High yesterday’s was his last. He’s going back to Taiwan. Not that he didn’t want to stay, but I heard from him that his father lost his job, and is announcing his career retirement. Think about this: an old man in his mid-fifties to sixties gets fired, and he’s only been getting an average income and the sole breadwinner of the family. Perhaps his family would have a better life in Taiwan, given his educational background in Singapore. And I initially thought the reason behind his departure was that he didn’t want to serve Singaporean National Service(it turned out that there were other circumstances, namely his father’s “career retirement”)…
Oh well. If I ever get to visit Taiwan at all, I’d be the first foreigner to head straight to his house. Let’s hope so. Provided that his parents could get over the trouble I’ve brought to him since the hacking incident…(I asked him to help me the other time to hack a prank into my primary school classmate’s computer to make it auto-restart, due to some childish feud of me being badly insulted by him, and when John offered the remedy to him, his parents called HIS parents, threatening legal action against John, and since then his parents demanded that John sever all ties with me. Luckily that wasn’t the case: we’re still close friends to this day.)
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Hi everyone!
I haven’t blogged in quite some time, as there were some major technical problems with my computer. Firstly, my blog servers wouldn’t let me in! Especially until now, my main blog is still inaccessible due to some infuriating cock-ups.
To put it in simple terms, I would say that the Lord has been kind to me all this while. Firstly, I was thinking that I’m going to lose all contact with my Secondary 4 seniors when I stumbled upon a stack of rough paper, and there was the contact list of my seniors! Also, I’ve realised that I’m getting better and better in Mathematics, and I shall try to keep it that way. And the new Elementary Maths teacher(previously, our teacher Ms Lim taught us both Additional Maths and E-Maths) Mr Koh, is quite a nice person actually. In fact, I wasn’t too keen on Ms Lim teaching us both E- and A-Maths simply by looking at my Mid-Year Exam results. At least things are turning out fine now, now that we don’t have to learn E-Maths stuff with A-Maths stuff mixed into it, confusing us all.
Probably you can say it’s bad to have two teachers teaching the same kind of stuff. I don’t mind 2 Maths teachers, as long as they can help me score for something I saw as me being very weak at.
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嗨！这是我第一次使用华语写博客。
大舅给我买了一双新的运动鞋。平时我没什么运动的，但是为了跟上在学校的潮流而叫他买下了鞋。鞋的品质还不错，惟有它不是名牌货(如Adidas或Nike的品牌)。既然我不是好动的家伙，干嘛学别人穿着那么贵的鞋呢? 反正下个月就要准备跑2.4公里的NAPFA测验(一种学生的体育测验)，不妨干脆把它给买下呢? 其实，这双些也蛮好穿的，更何况是9号鞋。
上个星期六，大舅带我们到小舅的公寓去建身院练习跑2.4公里，然后去游泳。或许是大舅老了，或是他平时没运动，也可能是他吃得太肥了。总之，他跑的速度比我的慢多了，而我的心跳速度在跑步时竟然跳到153！看起来蛮令人惊讶的，但是也没什么的，只是稍微喘一些… 然后在游泳池时，我竟然忘了带游泳眼镜！结果我在水里一片迷迷糊糊地在水里摸索着，搞到半天就只在本来的地方游了几圈，无法游到池里的另一边。还好有小舅有多一双extra的游泳眼镜，要不然我就像猪游来游去，搞到半天都游不到哪里去！
接下来，我们到东海岸公园旁边的一座香港式餐厅吃晚饭，又到了Bedok的KTV唱流行歌曲。我倒是没有唱歌的料，就让了小舅，小舅妈，Uncle Steven和大舅唱他们的，他们却要我唱几首。没什么值得夸耀的，结果我唱得像鬼一样难听。奇怪，我什么时候开始学会唱那么“鸟”的歌了呢?
English:
Hi! This is my first time using Chinese to write my blog.
Uncle Kelvin bought a pair of new sports shoes for me. Although I don’t usually exercise much, but for the sake of going with the trend of the school, I got him to buy it for me anyway. It isn’t too bad, the quality’s good and all that, except that it isn’t one of those branded goods(like Adidas or Nike). Ah well, since I’m not the sporty kind, I might as well save up the money for something else other than on branded shoes? Anyway, there’s still the NAPFA 2.4km run next month, so at least there’s some use for it! Moreover, it’s quite comfortable to wear, considering those are size 9 shoes.
Last Saturday, he took me to Uncle Yiye’s condo for exercise for the 2.4km run at the gym, as well as to swim after that. Maybe it’s because of his age, his lack of exercise, or his diet that caused his pot-belly. In any case, he was running slower than me on the treadmill, and on the screen, my heartbeat read 153 beats per minute! Well, it may seem quite a bit too fast, but there’s nothing much to it, except for a need to catch my breath back… Then, we were preparing for swimming when I realised that I left my goggles at home! In the end, if not for Uncle Yiye’s spare goggles, I’d be swimming in circles on the same spot again and again like a donkey!
Next, we went to a Hong Kong eatery near East Coast Park for dinner, and went to the KTV at Bedok. I didn’t have the talent for singing, so I let Uncles Kelvin, Yiye and Steven, as well as Aunt Wanyin sing their hearts out. Yet I was called on to sing a few anyway. Well, there’s nothing to be proud about, I ended up messing up the songs. Strange… When did I start “singing cock”?
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Somehow, the last few days of the school holidays are always the most fun, and also the most agonising. For one, I had to dash my way through all of my homework, and of course, the darned pineapple and aquaculture project proposal. Honestly, I got a rude shock that particular Wednesday when I realised that I was working with Wei Chiat as the leader…or so I thought back then. So I went on to double-check the name list, and thank God, hallelujah! It was Jin Meng, not him. Not that I mind working with him, he could very well be my personal mirror. To reflect, that’s one of the most wonderful things God gave to each and everyone of us.
So, I dashed away at the homework, and well, I’ve never felt this way before. No homework stress? I suppose years of doing homework gets you numbed sometimes, yeah? Well, this is yet another one of them incidences.
On Saturday, we went swimming. Uncle Kelvin made some sandwiches, and needed the ingredients. So we went to the supermarket, and guess what we saw!
Kinda bad timing eh? On June, they still sell things that are on the shelf since the Chinese New Year…
And it was there that I learnt a bit of the frogstyle swim(if you could call that frogstyle…) from Uncle Terence. To be honest, I’m quite surprised he could swim with lots of styles! Dog paddle, butterfly(he said he couldn’t perfect it somehow), etc. Nice! Then we were with Glenn and Clyde, very fun toddlers to play with! While I shifted to the 1.2m pool from the 0.9m pool(Glenn and Clyde can’t swim and being toddlers, they get scared by the depth easily, even with floats), Glenn barfed. Uh oh.
Out on the surface. End of swim for them little cousins. I swam on the 1.2m pool till it was almost six. In the end, after the shower, we were 10 minutes late for pool. 8-ball pool, I kept steady…
…on a losing streak. Eeyuck. Then after pool we went for dinner at Siglap, then headed for home from Grandma’s.
So. I didn’t really have much activity at home. Doing nothing but reading newspapers and sitting on the bed, rotting, and cracking a few occasional jokes every now and then, until Uncles Hin and Teck came back from their one-week holiday at Sarawak, Malaysia, at Uncle Hin’s residence. They brought back lots of stuff and exotic foodstuffs, like this one below.
These vegetables are picked from the roadside, where nobody ever actually grows them for a living. Kinda like edible ferns. Tastes quite nice, when cooked with belachan and prawn chilli. Look!
Disgusting, yes. But delicious, anyway. Then Uncle Teck told us of some of his adventures(and misadventures as well) in Sarawak. But it’s really time to go to bed, as tomorrow is the first day of the new school semester, and it ain’t good to stay up late just for the sake of blogging…
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Yep, yep yep yep. Let’s eat.
To tell you the truth, I can’t actually eat anymore, because I’ve just scoffed up half a pizza from Pizza Hut this afternoon. And because of this, I can’t eat a proper dinner, only picking small snippets of kung pow chicken, one of the prawns cooked with cereal, and a bit of vegetable here and there. If you guys’d know how full you can actually get when eating 3 slices of pizza, you’d know why I’m suffering from indigestion right now.
Check out the photo below. Damn, that was good food.
Now to how I got to eat the half-pizza. This afternoon, as it was Father’s Day, we decided on having pizza to celebrate it with Dad, who’s gotta get outta the house as soon as he finishes his lunch at 3 plus, to get enough passengers for the day to feed our mouths via his taxi. The pizza came real quick; only 15 minutes after I placed the order in the takeaway booth of Pizza Hut and it was ready. Hell, it was hot(not spicy) Hawaiian Lovers’. So we started to eat when Mum decided that just one slice for him was enough as he’d be full enough with the lunch she made earlier already. So, Brenda and I scoffed them up. 2 for her, 1 for Mum(she isn’t a big eater…) and 2 for me.
The trouble came when Dad only took a few mouthfuls of the slice of pizza, and was full and unwilling to eat anymore(unwilling as he already had a “spare tyre” in his belly and is looking forward to losing some weight). So, I was the only one who’s left and greedy enough to finish off the leftovers. That’s, strictly speaking, just close to half a pizza, and not the exact half.
Now, onto the part of discovery. Recently, I’ve just bought this SanDisk© M2 Memory Stick, which has 1GB memory in it for SGD(S$) 80. I didn’t tell anyone about it, until today, when Uncle Yiye propped the phone open and discovered a tiny piece of new memory card. Damn.
Then all hell came loose. Well, it wasn’t like I spent this big amount of money every time I go shopping for stuff… but, yeah. They were right, there could be cheaper memory chips around, yet I unknowingly bought it from one of the places that sold these stuff at the highest prices - the Hello! Shop. Crap. There, I got stuff drilled into my head about how no man is an island and stuff…
Well, yeah. I don’t speak often, and the situations get worse for every one more person I know. Worse, I get tongue-tied when there’s girls to talk to. Yeah, I know it seems funny. Damn, we’re human, and I just don’t believe that nobody except me has that kind of problem, eh? But this time, it’s probably because I didn’t tell them about how I spent that amount of money that made them mad… Well, what’s the use of fretting, since the memory stick’s already bought and non-refundable?
