They shall grow not old, As we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, Nor the years condemn, At the going down of the sun And in the morning We will remember them. ~ Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

New Zealanders consider 25th April to be an important national day of commemoration - not of war and the horrors of war, but of bravery and valour, brotherhood and nationhood.
Indeed, for many of us it is considered now to be the day, back in 1915, when our small developing nation, regarded dispensable by British war lords, deserted in its most dreadful hour by Mother England, truly became of age.

Today is a special day for Kiwis.

To read more: ANZAC Day

As a South Islander, a Cantabrian born and bred, I thoroughly approve of the new 50 cent stamp we are soon to be using for our regular letters.

Lake Coleridge, named after a descendant of the famous English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was created by glacier moraine. The water is snow-fed, freezing cold - testified to be so by one who once braved a skinny-dip therein! But to climb the surrounding mountains would require those scansorial feet that, as a native of the Canterbury Plains, I do not have.

This is the kind of natural beauty that tells me about the artistry and character of He who created all. To have spoken it all into being is quite some feat, and it has me wondering about the liberal theologians who say they believe in such a God but then go on to deny the intervention of His supernatural abilities whereby a virgin did give birth, and the crucified Jesus was bodily resurrected.

God is certainly not limited by liberal theology. It took Someone of incredible imagination to conceive of our world, and incredible artistry to design all its features. The only limits God exhibits are those self-imposed by virtue of His character, and of His being. The question may be asked, “can God create an object too heavy even for Himself to lift?” and the answer is neither yes nor no. If the answer is Yes, then it suggests that He is not omnipotent (all powerful) - and the same if the answer is No. The answer is that the question itself is meaningless nonsense. It is another form of the question “Is there something that is more than infinite?” And the answer to that is that it is logically impossible for anything to be more than infinite because infinity has no end. In short, the question represents a category mistake.

Our Creator has the power to do anything actually possible, even if it is impossible for ourselves to do, but He doesn’t attempt that which is meaningless nonsense as His character, His being, is not that of meaningless nonsense. The liberal theologians who attempt to strip away the truth of the Virgin Birth and the bodily Resurrection of Christ are confusing their own power (the lack of it) for His, laying on God their own human impotence. God who created all is far greater than that, as testified by His entire creation.

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To Nature

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It may indeed be fantasy when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.

Judah’s Journal was born two years ago today. It began rather tentatively as something of an experiment. Secretly I didn’t think I would keep it going for long. I hadn’t a clue what I might write about, nor where the adventure would take me. Over the two years since, it has evolved into something I never imagined - a witness for Christ, a resource for Christian apologia, and a further resource for information on the reality of Islam’s threat to the western world, all sprinkled with a little music, quilting, other odd topics and numerous images.

To date there are 157 entries, 382 comments, and while I don’t have a working stats program at present, it has in the past received visits from over 70 different countries representing over 40 different languages. It continues to generate interesting correspondence from people who prefer to communicate by email rather than post comments, and it receives much good press which has been really encouraging. One of the most common remarks is that it is a very pretty site. It has also been described as well organized, and that it contains a wealth of helpful information. I have had the odd suggestion for improvement, and one was the addition of Bible software - thus the clickable links to Bible Gateway, e-Sword and InstaVerse which can be found in the left-hand side bar.

So where to next?

I don’t have any great plans for Judah’s Journal. I write things when I can, and when something begs to be written. For the time being it just exists, and hopefully provides an interesting resting place for cyber travellers who happen upon it. It hasn’t always been easy to keep going as I do contemplate the seeming arrogance in thinking that others might ever want to read anything I write, but when I slacken off, the messages start coming - where are you Judah? And as someone born with ink in her veins, who thinks with her keyboard, it does get hard to stay away for too long.

So the first two years have come and gone. I wonder if it will still be around in another two years? Can you wait that long with me to see? If you are reading this now, I hope you drop in again many times thereafter, and perhaps be here with me again should Judah’s Journal have further birthdays and turn three, and four, and five…

For some, writing a Journal or a diary becomes a bind, a burden, even a monster which has insatiable demands for one’s attention. Fortunately this has not been the case here. In fact, it reminds me of the words that Jesus reportedly said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)

It has been a pleasure and a blessing to present this witness for He who would simplify our lives and lighten our burdens if we would only heed His counsel. And before I blow out my two candles, I wish to mention my gratitude to a certain friend who lead me to his Lord and Master, and who has graciously shared his bandwidth with me, providing technical support and setting me off on this fun adventure. Thank you DKC, Mr Visiblesoul, my Christian brother and friend.

Christians are often accused of being narrowminded, or not very tolerant. Together with such an accusation, it is assumed that being narrowminded and intolerant are negative things. It is thought not very nice to be narrowminded, and not very nice to be intolerant. Therefore Christianity is a not very nice kind of faith to have, and makes one into a not very nice person.

As far as these things being not very nice, there are some important points to consider before one is quite so judgemental of Christians. Yes, those who like to call Christians judgemental (intolerant and narrowminded) are often being the judgemental ones themselves!

To be narrow in one’s thinking is quite essential in certain things. Broadmindedness has no place in the world of scientific facts where water always boils at 212°F and freezes at 32°F at sea level, gravity causes objects to fall rather than rise, the compass points to magnetic north rather than east or west, and the sum of 3 and 3 in the decimal number system is always 6. We rely on narrowmindedness in these matters. Give a broadminded response to a request for directions to a point on a map, and the one asking will be left misinformed and confused. In a great many instances, the narrow way is the only rational way to go, and being narrow about an issue defines it precisely, clearly and accurately.

The words of Jesus were far from broadminded here:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
(Matthew 7:13-14)

And now that business of tolerance…

This is a favourite word of the day. It is considered a virtue to be tolerant, and of some things that is so. But is it really such a virtue to be tolerant (liberal, willing to put up with, permissive) of things that can be harmful to ourselves and society? This supposedly virtuous attitude has been made to cover too many aspects of life, and now in the name of tolerance we are accepting of bad behaviour that amounts to delinquency and criminal activity, slackness of moral convictions that have broken up families, and a welcoming of ideologies that promote self-serving attitudes fostering greed, poverty, disease, angst, hopelessness and despair.

Most caring parents know that loving a child does not mean being permissive, giving in to every want and whim, and withholding discipline. Being tolerant of bad behaviour gives permission for more of the same. Being tolerant in moral issues results in a lack of convictions. The more liberal and broad-minded, the more “anything goes”. Being tolerant is therefore not such a virtue after all. It is a vice.

One person who was decidedly not tolerant is Jesus. He was most definitely intolerant of a world that made us slaves to our appetites, covetness, selfishness, greed, lust, pride, and other sins. He was intolerant of hypocrisy and of falseness, of deception, of any form of unrighteousness. If one is looking for any kind of virtue in tolerance, one is looking in the wrong direction when these things are allowed to go unchecked. Thus there is virtue in intolerance, and we do well to be intolerant as Jesus Himself was of sin.

That leads one to being narrowminded, I hear. But if we are to be intolerant of such things as selfishness, then we are to be the opposite of that - selfless, unselfish, genuinely loving, giving what others truly and genuinely need. We are presented with a choice - to go the broad, easy, tolerant of sin, popular and secular way of the world, or to choose to follow the way shown by Jesus, the narrow way that is intolerant of sin, that is clear and precise and accurate in its way to He by whose grace we have life.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
(John 14:6)

The content of Judah’s Journal is copyright. If you are NOT reading this on Judah’s Journal, then it has been copied from there and is re-published illegally - in other words, stolen. Those who would do that are common thieves and lack moral integrity. Judah’s Journal

Are you someone who thinks that folk who lived around 2000 years ago were less intelligent than ourselves? Do you think they were easily duped, could not reason as well or as effectively, and that their minds had less processing power than do ours today? For one thing, I doubt that most of us could remember details anywhere near as well with our easy reliance on writing it down and storing it in various forms for quick and accurate retrieval. Without the need to memorize as folk did back then, our minds could be said to have become somewhat lazy, relatively speaking. And while memorizing doesn’t necessarily mean comprehension, there is still nothing to indicate that intelligence is greater today than in any other age of homosapien existence. Critics were just as astute and cynical, their reasoning just as precise, and their observations requiring particular attention to detail for reports and later accurate recall. Only the arrogant can waive aside the evidence that convinced so many back then and since that the man who died so hideously had truly come alive and walked free from his embalment and burial.

For the Resurrection to have any significance, Jesus had to be well and truly dead first. It must not be forgotten that He was scourged beforehand - repeatedly beaten and whipped with a 3-lash scourge that had pieces of bone or metal attached to the ends which would tear into the skeletal muscles setting the stage for circulatory shock. A crown of thorns was pushed on to his head. Nails that were between 5 and 7 inches long and almost half an inch square were hammered through his wrists and feet. He was speared through the ribcage, his right lung and pericardal sac and heart pierced releasing both blood and pleural fluids. Just that wound in itself would have been fatal. Most unusually, his legs were not broken - but there was no need to do so as he was already undeniably dead. Later his body was embalmed in up to 100 pounds of spices and bound in bandages, these hardening as the spices and pastes dried. Even had he only swooned and then woken up in the tomb, he was firmly encased. The tomb had a huge stone weighing up to 2 tons rolled across its entrance on a carved downward track, a seal fixed across it, and a Roman guard set in place. Pilate required, and was given, official assurance that Jesus was dead. Any assumptions that Jesus had only just swooned fly right in the face of modern medical knowledge.

Not only did He die, but Jesus also rose in the same physical body in which He died. There are many alternate explanations for the disappearance of Christ’s dead body, but none of them satisfy the facts of the case. Many sceptics have become Christians while attempting to refute the Resurrection. To present all the evidences here would take too many words, but a summary list of salient points to address include:

~ this event occurred as predicted
~ the Roman seal was broken and the Guard gone missing
~ the huge heavy stone was moved away
~ Jesus was not in the tomb, but his burial bandages were left behind
~ over 500 eyewitnesses saw him alive, including disbelieving and hostile witnesses who were subsequently convinced it was He
~ the lives of His followers changed dramatically and despite torture and death they did not recant

The significance and explanations surrounding each of these points have been debated strenuously, and the proof evidence presented continues to point to the only reasonable conclusion, namely, that Christ rose bodily from death. To follow these evidences and the arguments every way concerning them, click on the following links. Go on, I dare you! Sceptics and scoffers beware. If you are prepared to give honest consideration to what you read here, prepare for (at very least) a seed of doubt to enter your disbelief.

The content of Judah’s Journal is copyright. If you are NOT reading this on Judah’s Journal, then it has been copied from there and is re-published illegally - in other words, stolen. Those who would do that are common thieves and lack moral integrity. Judah’s Journal

Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh McDowell
Evidence for the resurrection of Christ by Peter Kreeft
Evidences for the Resurrection by J. Hampton Keathley III, M.Th.
Evidence for the Resurrection from “Contend for the Faith“, an Apologetics and Theology Resource.

A comment from Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Boston College:

The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into your heart before you answer.

Yesterday I received a very nice surprise from my friend and fellow blogger, Mark Alexander, who announced that he has nominated Judah’s Journal for the “Thinking Blogger Award”. Criterion for nomination is that the blog concerned had made one think. It isn’t specified exactly what the blog concerned made one think, but just that it did. I suspect in Mark’s case it was probably good things that it made him think, but regardless of what they were, I am very pleased that it caused such a response in him anyway.

The way the Award works is like a game of Tag. Now that I have been tagged, I am “it” and allowed to nominate 5 blogs that made me think. Again, nothing is required to be said about what they made me think - just that they surely did so. However, I am not a great blog-reader and I don’t think I even read 5 blogs, or not on any regular basis, so I intend to nominate a couple less than five but instead say a little more about what they made me think in order to make up for the deficiency. Those whom I nominate are then “tagged” and if they accept nomination, should go ahead and nominate their own choice of five, linking back to Judah’s Journal as the previous tagger. This form of tagging does not involve spray-cans of paint, nor the Police, nor upset citizens - it is relatively safe, moral and legal to go ahead. If one accepts nomination, one is expected to post the little Award logo/banner as well (which I did just now - later - when Mark kindly pointed that out to me).

Mark’s own blog, A New Dark Age Is Dawning, causes me to think about the worrisome encroachment of Islam into western civilization and the very real dangers that this presents all of us who do not want Sharia law forced upon us. It is scary stuff, thinking about that, but cannot be avoided if you are to take a realistic look at what is happening out there in our world.

Anyway, now I am nominating for this prestigious Award the following blogs (in alphabetical order):

Covenant Theology - Puritan Lad (Scott) expounds and elucidates a traditional exegesis of Scripture in a very clear and sensible manner. He debunks a lot of the cultural infestations that cause a corruption of true Christian belief and offers much tasty and nutritious food for thought.

Omnipotentgrace - August (John) does something quite similar to Puritan Lad’s blog (indeed, they post and/or comment to each other’s blogs at times) and when it comes to sustaining food for thought, offers further menu items for the discerning diner. Jesus told Peter “Feed my sheep” (John 21:18) and these two blogs most certainly do that.

Toward the Goal - John (a different one) shares his Christian journey with experiences and discoveries from Bible studies, his delightful little family (check out the photos of the very recent new addition!) and events in wider Baptist Church circles. John, you’re tagged too, haha!

OK you three, CONGRATULATIONS! on being nominated for this most prestigious Thinking Blogger Award.

I bet there must have been quite a few sore arms this morning after the performance last night. But then again, our national orchestra are professionals of high calibre and very well practised with their instruments. It was the longest symphony that I have sat through, and also quite the grandest. The composer had pulled out all stops (an appropriate expression to use considering this was a brilliant organist - yes, that to the left is the organ he used to play in the Abbey of St Florian, Austria) and produced something that usually polarizes the audience into lovers and haters rather than fence-sitters. In case you had not guessed, I’m something of a classical (including romantic period) music junkie. It’s better than being on drugs, and to be medicated by music produces only harmless side effects and no toxic ones.

But rather than go into great academic lengths about Anton Bruckner and his distinctive style, I prefer to make some light-hearted observations of last night’s performance in particular. I’m in the lover camp rather than the haters one. No’s 5, 6 and 7 are a nice listening experience, the first movement of No 4 my absolute favourite, but No 8 is quite extraordinary. It is best likened to taking a train journey, sitting there in your window seat and gazing out at the forever changing scenery - valleys, mountain peaks, rivers, towns, farms, lakes, forests, back yards, all kinds of things. Their connectedness is provided by the journey rather than anything much else, and their sequencing somewhat randomized. However, the destination is reached regardless and one can look back on quite an interesting and varied journey. But best of all is the third movement, the Adagio where one encounters “celestial heights” after escaping from Dante’s Inferno.

Last night we had two goes at the Adagio, or rather at the first couple of bars. It is just the most hauntingly beautiful beginning to anything, and just as the orchestra had made its soft and delicate entry into the magic… somebody sneezed. It came from the seats directly at the back to the left of the orchestra, and equalled a grave mishap from the percussion in its magnitude. The conductor stopped the show. Good for him, as it resembled the shock of a disorientated moth darting into one’s soup and floundering there. He held the orchestra in silence for an extra minute, and when the reverberations of the sneeze had faded, we got the opening bars again. Oh Lord, may I never commit such an indiscretion myself. Thankyou for reminding me to put the Strepsils in my pocket.

Sitting three rows from the front I saw more violins than anything else, but a good view under the chair of the leader of the seconds had me watching a most enthusiastic cellist, a woman with short-cropped orangey-coloured hair and looking not too unlike Sir Elton John. I hope she doesn’t ever come across Judah’s Journal and recognize herself written of in this way, but that is what I saw. Not only that, but she threw her whole body into it, leaning forward and bouncing on her seat, sawing her instrument in half with the bow in her fist as though urgently in need of extra firewood for the forthcoming winter. And through a little tunnelled opening past the back of the leader of the seconds, I watched with suspense as the double bass next to her swayed like a gangway in a gale, threatening to topple over. All stops were out for real. The organist in Bruckner had him excel in the sounds he had composed, and the combinations were certainly unique all to himself. No wonder the Brahms camp had hated him. It was hard to fit him into the order of their day.

The lady in the row just in front of me and two seats to the right must have been quite overwhelmed by all of this. I don’t know why people go to orchestra performances just to sit there the whole way through with fingers in their ears. Beats me. Honestly, she took them out only during the brief breaks between movements. Maybe she was really more of a Brahms type but had not realized it.

The content of Judah’s Journal is copyright. If you are NOT reading this on Judah’s Journal, then it has been copied from there and is re-published illegally - in other words, stolen. Those who would do that are common thieves and lack moral integrity. Judah’s Journal

Well, eighty minutes of Number Eight was a very satisfying dose for one who pefers her medication in terms of quavers, chords and cadenzas. It is my addiction and my joy, that which brings my soul soaring to celestial heights where angels tend the throne of God. As wrote William Congreve in The Mourning Bride way back in 1697…

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

Yes, my rock is now truly softened and my knotted Oak quite bendy.