Category personal

Feb 16 2011

2011 Egypt and prophecy

Read something quite amazing on the blog of Walid Shoebat, an ex-Palestinian terrorist who came to Jesus.

http://www.shoebat.com/blog/archives/753

This passage from the bible specifically mentions current events in Egypt:

Isaiah 19:2-4 “I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian— brother will fight against brother, neighbour against neighbour, city against city, kingdom against kingdom.  The Egyptians will lose heart, and I will bring their plans to nothing; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead, the mediums and the spiritists.  I will hand the Egyptians over to the power of a cruel master, and a fierce king will rule over them,” declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty.

Something not mentioned on the news at all, is the Suez Canal.  This man made water highway through Egypt is a shortcut to get goods in from Asia to Europe and North America.  That includes oil just in case it wasn’t expensive enough already.  A new Egyptian administration could chose to tax this route higher or close it altogether.   Obviously this affects everywhere meaning more inflation could be on the way.

Reading this part and making my own conclusions:

Daniel 11:43 He (the AntiChrist) will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Cushites in submission.

This also has great significance, as I read today (16th February 2011) not only has historical items been looted from a museum in Cairo in recent weeks.

Libya is on the news today here.

Cush refers to a nation in north east Africa, possibly Ethiopia, or, in this case today on the news there has been the birth of a new nation, South Sudan which breaks away from the main part of Sudan, this is a place where Christians have suffered one of the highest rates of persecution in the world.  South Sudan will become autonomous in July 2011.

I do pray that Egypt gets a better leader and a government, but I am not optimistic.  A likely side effect of all the trouble in many middle east nations at the moment as this scripture says is lots of Arab people come to Christ as they get disenchanted with Islam and their government.

Feb 14 2011

LCD picture frames for promoting web sites and business marketing

Something I saw when i was just about to leave the UK to do my volunteering work, a couple of small businesses have some of those cheap LCD picture frames in the window of their premises.

I really like this idea, often a normal PC is used for this job, and using an LCD picture frame for simple slideshow of a companies products and services, doing it this way rather than a PC, means no messing about with Windows updates and patches, antivirus updates, a bulky box that has got to sit somewhere, etc.  Most of these just require a low cost SD card (2Gb is about £5.99 from play.com) to load on pictures as a slide show.

A high street bank here in Jerusalem has a clunky old 19″ CRT monitor for customer notices outside, but seems to be off.  This pharmacy store has a LCD picture frame on a counter.

I am thinking about these LCD picture frames could be good for the charity I work for.   The food bank which helps poor Israelis is likely to have people walking past when it is shut and does not have much information on the front of building.    Images on the screen could promote our organisation, and have information in English, Hebrew and Russian (which 15% of Israelis speak)   These devices are cheap and don’t consume much power.   I don’t know if they are reliable enough for 24 hour operation.   Staff could easily compile content onto SD cards from their own PCs without needing much help from IT administrators.

My good friend Ed Ross promotes a podcast called Geeks & God that provides discussion for churches looking to improve their web sites and use of IT.  I would be quite curious to know if anyone has deployed these in the windows of their charity, church, youth centre or retail shop to promote themselves.

For web designers I think these are also of interest.   A web design or marketing agency could resell these picture frames to their clients with content shared from the web site to get a web site noticed by people walking past a shop.  A bright and creative theme for a web site could have some of the pictures played back on the picture frames, and could help to point potential clients to a web site, if say, people walk past a business outside of business hours on the way to the pub, takeaway or whatever.  Realistically you are only going to get 10-30 seconds of notice from the public, but some people may walk past these places every day often perhaps.

Here in Israel, I have seen some of these picture frames but seems to be specifically aimed for on a shop counter, this one is from a pharmacy I was at the other day.   There are some (with 10 or 12″ screen I think) in all the branches of Aroma coffee shops I see here in Israel, but the normal picture frames in retail electronics stores like BUG, Kravitz etc, only sell 7 or 8 inch screens.

Feb 11 2011

Jerusalem Assembly

The weekend before last I went to a different church with a friend, this time to Jerusalem Assembly congregation in Talpiyot.

I ended up not going to my normal church (King of Kings) due to needing to stay in the house as my room mate was coming back and he would not have any keys to get in.

This service was great as Jerusalem Assembly, the service has two speakers, one in Hebrew and repeated in English.  Like some Hebrew only services in other churches you can rent these small radio receiver units, to get a translation, but at this church translations are offered in French, German, Spanish, Arabic and Russian!!

I thought this was quite amazing given the amount of work involved to do this, after the service there was soup and pastries and cake offered and a good chance to meet and chat with different people.   I got see some Israeli believers I work with, as well as other Jewish, Arab and foreign Christians working or volunteering in the land from different congregations.  The word and the worship was really good here.

www.jerusalemassembly.com

Feb 5 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 4 Nimrod’s Fortress

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Back past this Arab town on a steep hill we saw earlier, Rachel tells us this town is called Majdel Shams which is one of the largest Arab Druze communities in the Golan.

Driving out of Mount Hermon, we travelled south only a little bit to see another place, on the way down from the hill there are some small sheds with people selling fruit and vegetables by the side of the road.   Reminds me of some similar stands I saw on some highways in Jordan in 2009.

The stretch of road leading up to the fortress has some slightly scary sights, I can see a glimpse of three wrecked cars at the below the side of the steep hill, yikes!

Nimrod’s castle is interesting, there is a mention of this in the book of Micah:

Micah 5 : 5-6 And he (Jesus) will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land and march through our fortresses.  We will raise against them seven shepherds, even eight commanders, who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land and march across our borders.

Like the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon, this section of the top of Israel, was owned by Syria and claimed back by Israel in 1967 Six day war, this prophecy is spot on!

These stairs lead into underground rooms in the fortress, but you can walk around the sides to see all kinds of history.

The fortress was built by Al-Aziz Uthman in 1229 who was a Sultan of Egypt and stands 800 metres above sea level.  Nimrod himself dates back from Genesis.

Genesis 10 : 8-9 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth.  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.”

An earthquake damage the fortress in the 18th century.   I was looking today on the new version (6 beta) of Google Earth to find if earthquake faults are documented, but shows the Galilee marked with a zone marked ‘Dead Sea’  oops, (epic geography FAIL!)  Maybe another time I will be able to to research this.   I do know earthquakes do happen in this country, not that I have seen but there was at least two small ones in the north a few years ago.

In my last story of this trip I will show you some mysterious biblical animals that roam around the top Hermon….

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Feb 2 2011

Somewhere out in the internet, bloggers have a twin…

Who is your blogging doppleganger?

Doppleganger, a German word is described as someone as having a twin or someone else with the same name.
See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doppelganger

A while ago, I found this chap who not only has the same first and second name as me, from the US, who is interested the bible and IT stuff.

Check out his site at: www.jonathanscorner.com

Only I am in Israel, where the old testament was written in Hebrew, and Christos Jonathan Hayward studies Greek Orthodox Christianity, Greek being the language of the New Testament.

My name; Jonathan Peter is a Hebrew name and a Greek name.  Christos Jonathan, has a Greek then Hebrew name.   See the originals of the name Jonathan here

I wonder how many bloggers and writers have similar sounding counterparts with some paradoxes?

If you have discovered someone with unusually similar interests feel free to comment.

Feb 1 2011

Weather in the desert

This is out of my bedroom of my flat yesterday morning (31st January)  We have rain, and plenty of it!!

Someone did tell me of storms this week that were due.   Not only is the rain a blessing and desperately needed, its probably a good thing for the Egyptians if they get some, as I doubt if troublemakers will want to be protesting and looting out in the wet!   Last night there was a brief bit of thunder and lightning, and I think some more light rain.

Jan 30 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 3, Sloping off

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

The ski lift was good fun, I don’t think I have been on one of these before.   I have never been skiing in my life, and despite snow, there isn’t enough to justify a proper skiing season at the moment, even if there were, without sounding like a total wuss, my travel insurance doesn’t cover skiing I don’t think.   Only one of the 4 ski lifts was running, its more of case its fun to come up here and see some scenery that’s very different from the rest of the middle east.

These plastic sledges can be rented from a small shed, but they feel extremely cheaply made, they are highly thin, like the plastic used to make ice cream tubs, and some stress lines I saw in the middle, felt it wasn’t going to last very long, still it was fun to propel down the this short hill.   There was an official looking steward to stop people colliding into each other, and make sure they walk around the side back up the top.

Also at the top was border control.  There is a DMZ (demilitarised zone) in between Syria and Lebanon up here, ie: a gap of land between the borders.   Said a quick hello to the soldiers and asked if it was ok to take pictures.

They seem to oblige 🙂  They might of been more comfortable guarding a base in Eilat maybe though 🙂

Dave decided to build a snowman, and felt that he should have hands free access to a phone 🙂

The cafe has an extra redundant piece of the machinery that operates the ski lift in the cafe as decoration.  It was nice and warm in this cafe, and got some great views from the top of Hermon.

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Jan 26 2011

12.5mm laptop hard disks not fitting a lot of laptops

My room mate asked me to upgrade his Toshiba Satellite laptop.   Its already quite new and very high spec with 6Gb of memory, Win7-64 and a Bluray drive.   It has 320Gb of disk space which is no longer big enough.   I think he bought it at the end of 2009, since then bigger disks have appeared for laptops.

Being a bit behind in physical form factor and capacity that hard drives in laptops and the heavier USB external drives, only in the last year you can now get 750 Gigabyte and 1 Terabyte disks for laptops.  Trouble is, that these drives are in the fatter 12.5mm format as opposed to 9mm disks in most laptops.   Various Dells and Toshibas in recent years have the hard disk underneath rather than a sideways mounted module which is better.

Picture shown: The battery is an extra large capacity, so the ‘foot’ raises it off the ground a bit.   A) Original 9mm high Hitachi 320Gb disk.   B) New Toshiba branded 12.5mm 1Tb disk. C) The trapdoor panel that will not fit.

Here is the problem:  the 12.5mm 1Tb drive simply does not fit in side this Toshiba.   If I fit it in loosely, gingerly turn it the right way up and power up and put the Toshiba in the BIOS mode, the disk is seen by the computer as you can see from the picture.   To be honest, its only the panel that snaps on the bottom that will not fit closed.   Its not mine, so cutting any bits off is totally out, it does look like only a few small discrete tabs on the hard disk door would need to be removed.   Nor is any bits hanging out a desirable option.   It does very very almost fit.

I bought the Toshiba 1TB 2.5″ hard disk from popular IT retailer DABS, they told me they will not accept it back as I bought it around mid December so I am stuck with it.   This is a bit unfair as they didn’t specify its a taller 12.5mm unit on their web site.

Some Google searches shows there is plenty of compatibility issues with some Dells, HPs and Apple Macbooks.   These drives won’t fit in a Playstation 3 either.

Please Toshiba, (and Dell, HP, Acer, Sony, Apple too)  can you provide some simple info in a chart of which models can use these newer cheap large disks?   All I can say is, do some thorough research if you are tempted by a big hard drive upgrades for your laptop.

Its strange that Toshiba make computers, and make parts, (hard disks, LCD panels, DVD drives)  used in other brand laptops, but my own 2006 model Toshiba Equium A100 has a Panasonic made DVD drive and a Western Digital made hard disk!!

Update:   DABS’ customer service manager let me return it with a 10% handling fee.   I have found a 9mm high 750Gb Seagate 2.5″ drive, so I am going to use this.

Jan 26 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 2, Snow patrol

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

After much driving up and up, we took a bit of a wrong turn, and saw an Arab town and a military checkpoint ahead, then realised it was a border into Lebanon!  

Note at the time of writing this, the Lebanese government has collapsed, meaning Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation could be filling this gap as they seek to become a satellite post of Iran, threatening Israel even more.   This really needs prayer as this huge worry for Israel, and awful for the Lebanese people as well, this country has one of the largest Arab Christian communities.

We were not in any danger at all, as this checkpoint is well protected, I took this picture of some run down farm buildings out of the window which was close by.

Just a short drive later, we reached Mount Hermon!

Mount Hermon is considered a possible place of the Transfiguration, where Jesus took Peter, James and John up for prayer, and reportedly turned bright white, where he spoke with Moses and Elijah who appeared.  The scriptures reveal it was known as two other names – ‘Sirion’ by the Sidonians; the Amorites call it ‘Senir’.  Deuteronomy 3 : 9

The Bible’s own romantic style book of Song of Solomon mentions it too in versus 4 : 8 and Psalms 89 talks about Mount Hermon giving praises to the Lord too.

Only last friday I had a Shabbat dinner with a couple from my work and they had a bottle of wine the came from this exact part of the country.   After my trip to the Dead Sea which was the lowest place on earth (ie: below sea level)    Hermon is 2,814 metres high.

Once parked and we went through the visitor entrance and a initial bit of childish exploitation of the first glimpse of snow meant a snowball fight, there was some good places to get photos done:-

Woohoo!  all manner of types of military and rescue vehicles for snow use, something most people would think you would never have in Israel…

We were hoping the girls would want a photo of themselves next to some interesting piece of winter military gear here as well, but they chose a giant plastic snowman.  Tsk.

Then off onto the chairlift, yay!!!

This requires the man operating the lift to get you positioned exactly right so quickly sit down and he raises the safety bar down.   Top: someone (probably the boss I guess) has a nice collection of different snow vehicles.   Both pictures: note the strategically placed net, in case you get scooped by the chair lift by accident, or, fall out!

check out www.skihermon.co.il

Next up the slope….

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Jan 25 2011

As we forgive

Last Thursday, instead of a usual worship and social get together we normally have at my church we watched a movie called ‘As we forgive’.

We saw this film that talks about a large number of murderers where released early from jail in Rwanada where two tribes of people were at war and many people were slaughtered.  The government released these people from prison which caused initial anger and fear from the survivors and families of those lost.

Where as its hard to grasp anyone forgiving someone that was lost in war or terrorism, especially as today I walked past a coffee shop in Hillel Street, and a bakery shop in Jaffa Street that used to be a Sbarro pizza joint – both of these scenes of two tragic suicide bombings that happened in the early 2000s here in Jerusalem.

The film showed rows and rows of skulls and bones on shelves, and talked to murderers all confessed their actions against the families of those who had lost loved ones to killing.   Some of these families amazingly accepted a confession from the killers that were out of prison quite quickly, and some it took several meetings over the space of a few months.

Where as for most people, to forgive someone for the responsibility of a death of a loved one seem enormously hard to comprehend, the point of the movie is about forgiveness can be done with any kind of wrong doing.   This film was really good and I hope it is shown in more churches.

www.asweforgivemovie.com