text:
PHIL: Well, John, I love to do this. We've done it a few times. JOHN: We have. PHIL: I've been collecting questions from
people who are here at the Truth Matters Conference, pretty much through the conference. And I've tried to organize them in a topical
kind of format. Some of these are practical questions, some
of them are biblical questions. And for the most part they reflect exactly
the kinds of questions we typically get from listeners at Grace To You. And the most common question we get, of course,
at Grace To You is…where can I find a church in my area that's like Grace Church? And our standard answer is, "There aren't
any and you can't have John MacArthur." But the questions that follow up with that
typically have to do with problems in churches and struggles that people have in their home
church. Grace To You has always bent over backwards
to be supportive of local churches. We recognize there are churches that have
problems and sometimes severe problems. With that in mind, I want to read Hebrews
13:17 which is a familiar text that says, "Obey your leaders and submit to them for
they're keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning
for that would be of no advantage to you." So there's a command there to be obedient
to the leaders of the church. And yet we know that there are churches where
leaders are abusive and take advantage of what they think is God-given authority and
actually abuse the sheep. What are the biblical parameters for this? JOHN: Well, that opens up a wide discussion. First, I need to say this, and this is the
bottom line, no preacher by virtue of his calling has any authority. I possess absolutely no authority by virtue
of my calling over anybody, any time. I don't have a right to rule people. I don't have a right to rule the leadership
of the church. I don't have any right to make decisions about
everything. The only authority that I possess, it's not
academic because I'm better trained, it's not because of my calling to preach and teach. It's not because I'm called the senior pastor. The only authority I have at all in the church
is the delegated authority that comes through the Word of God. The only time I can ever speak authoritatively
about anything is when I speak the Word of God. I don't have authority to say, "You become
this…you do this…you go over here…you do this, paint this room green, buy this property,
whatever." And I've never exercised authority in those
ways. I don't have authority over people's lives. God has authority over the life of His church. That authority is basically from His Word
and by His Spirit. I'm simply the instrument to tell people what
the Word says and what it means. So that is the only authority that I have. When a pastor gets beyond biblical authority,
he has abused his position. To tell people how to live and what to do,
who to marry, to control their lives, to dominate their life, tell them how much money to give,
that is an abuse of the role of the pastor who is merely a shepherd that delegate authority
under the Great Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, the application of Hebrews 13:17
applies to those who are faithful. If you go back to the book of Jeremiah, even
God excoriated the shepherds who misled Israel, right? False shepherds, false prophets. And all through Scripture, everybody has been
warned in every generation of history in the revelation of God, there has always been a
warning about false teachers, false shepherds. Of course it reaches an apex in the New Testament,
in the gospels when Jesus says to the people of Israel in the Passion Week, "Don't follow
them. Do not follow them." The Apostles of the New Testament pick up
the same thing. Perhaps the most definitive passage would
be 2 Peter…or Jude where we are very, very seriously warned about following false leaders,
false teachers. How do you judge the true? You judge them by their fidelity to the Word
of God, both in what they say and how they live. There are two ways to be a heretic. You can be a doctrinal heretic and you can
be a moral heretic. So you're to follow those who are true to
the faith. So the assumption in Hebrews 13 is that this
congregation of Hebrew believers have legitimate, honest, faithful shepherds and they need to
follow those shepherds. You need to flee false shepherds. You know to flee abusive shepherds. PHIL: Now there are movements in the church
today, and I use the plural because there are several like this that cite this text
and others, and in otherwise sound churches where under the name, under the guise of discipleship,
the elders of the church, or the pastor of the church exercises a sort of control over
the minutia of a person's life, where they want to have access to your checkbook to see
how you're spending your money. JOHN: Yeah, sure. PHIL: And that sort of accountability you
would see as over the top. JOHN: Completely. Jesus said, you know, He made this very clear,
we're not like the Gentiles. We don't lord it over people, right? Those are His very words. We don't…We don't act like the Gentiles. We don't lord it over people. We're the servant of everybody. To understand the role of a pastor or an elder
in the church is to understand that your responsibility is to serve. First of all, you serve God by His truth. Another simple but foundational truth is Christ
is the head of the church, not me. Christ is the head of the church. Through the years, you know this. I have preached messages in various environments
on Christ the head of the church, and somebody might say, "Well everybody knows that." Well, no they don't…no they don't. That doctrine…that great truth of Christ
the head of the church has sailed down to this generation on a sea of blood. People died, they were martyred trying to
uphold Christ as the head of the church. They were massacred for affirming Christ as
the head of the church in England, Scotland, lots of other places in the world. And it is still true that Christ is the head
of the church. How does He rule in His church? He rules in His church by speaking to His
church. How does He speak to His church, through His
Word. How do they know what His Word says? Through the servant that He has put in that
place. "I am a servant of the Lord," first of all. Secondly, "I'm a servant of the people." I don't find anything in the Scripture with
regard to lording it over people except serious warnings…very serious warnings against that. PHIL: How does someone know when it's time
to leave a church and I'll add to that by saying that question was prompted by someone
who wanted to know…should I continue to stay in a church that has a woman as a pastor? JOHN: Well, that church has no pastor. (Applause) "I permit not a woman to take authority
over man, to lead, to preach, to teach." There's no pastor there. So…look, how long do you stay in a church…first
of all, don't be in a big hurry to change churches. I don't like that. I don't like church hopping all the time,
going here, going there, jump in here, jump in there. You need to be a part of a community of people
that you become intimately acquainted with, that you're personally involved with, that
you minister to, minister with love and are loved by and you use your gifts and you fulfill
the one-anothers and you're not going to find a perfect church, you're not going to find
a perfect pastor. And I understand there's a downside to the
ubiquitous nature of people like me because it's…you know, people like you tend to compare
your pastor to me and that's…I don't like that, I don't feel comfortable with that because
pastors are my favorite people in the world. They need your support. They need your love. They need your help. They need your encouragement. So find a place and land there. You're not perfect, that place isn't perfect,
he's not perfect, I'm not perfect. Find a place where you can serve and use your
gifts. You say, "What kind of a place? A place where the Word of God is honored and
Christ is exalted. Okay? The Word of God is honored, Christ is exalted. And that can come in a lot of different packages. And where the leaders are trustworthy and
stay there. Don't leave because you got ticked off at
a meeting. Don't leave because somebody made a decision
that made you mad. Don't leave because you didn't like the fact
that they put somebody in this responsibility and it should have been you, or somebody you
wanted. Don't let it get petty. I would just encourage you that if you were
living in the New Testament time, let's assume you might have been living when the New Testament
was written. And let's say you lived in Ephesus. You had one church, the church at Ephesus,
right? That was it. If you lived in Laodicea, you had one church. If you lived in Laodicea you were in a difficult
situation because you were in a church that Christ would spew out of His mouth. If you lived in Ephesus, you were in a church
that had left its first love. If you were in Sardis, you were in a church
that was virtually dead. You didn't have an option. And throughout those seven letters to the
churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Lord always says, "Blessed are those who have not soiled
their garments." There may be situations where it's the best
you have, it's all you have. That's been true throughout history. That's true today in many parts of the world. You either go to the church or you don't go
to church. And that's not an option. And I always like to give people advice too. Don't look…just because you have a pastor
that's doing things that you really don't like and he's driving you crazy and he's disappointing
you and he doesn't handle the Word of God, don't pack up and leave. Stay long enough to see if he leaves first. Because so many times people pull out, start
another church, and the guy leaves. And now you've got two churches when if people
were more patient to let the Lord do His work over a period of time, it might have taken
care of itself. So just be very judicious. But if the Word of God is not honored, and
not rightly proclaimed, if Christ is not exalted, if the leadership is not trustworthy, find
another place. You're not obligated there. PHIL: Now you said you…it's really not an
option not to go to church, or you… JOHN: Well you don't go to church, you are
the church. You take the church to the place. But it's not…Hebrews tells us, "Forsake
not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is." Don't be like the people who don't go. Go to church. Go there. Go there because you love the Word, you love
the truth, you love the people of God, whoever loves God loves the people of God, John says. PHIL: So you don't approve if people stay
home and watch the Streaming Video from Grace Church. JOHN: If you're sick, or if it comes on at
a time when you're at home, you need to be in the church. You can't exist in isolation. God never intended that for you. Find a group of people that you can love and
serve and minister to and be a part of it, and be faithful and be loyal. And if you have a pastor that's disappointing
everybody, pray that the Lord will get him out of there. You know, pray him out. But you know what happens in churches like
that, pastors often will come into a church and disappoint so many people, they drive
the good people out of the church. And then, of course, they get disillusioned
cause it's not going the way they want it to go. They're not seeing success. And the next guy comes in and he's not any
better, and there's not anybody there to make him any better because all the good people
have already left and it's just a downward spiral. So don't be in a big hurry to leave unless
you know that the Word of God is being compromised either in the teaching, or in the living of
the leadership. PHIL: The Word of God being compromised is
subjective, because you already said there are picky things. There are… JOHN: Yeah, yeah, I don't mean subjective,
I don't mean it's his style or his technique, I mean you're not being taught the Word of
God accurately. He is not faithful to what I call the drive
train of the gospel. Look, he may have a different view of the
fall of angels, he may have a different view of baptism, he may have a different view of
eschatology. And that might be the best shot you've got. That might be the best church there is there. But what the questions that need to be asked
are, is he faithful to the core of the gospel? Which is a Triune God, deity of Christ, deity
of the Holy Spirit, deity of God the Father, the virgin birth, the sinless life of Christ,
substitutionary atonement, literal resurrection, salvation by grace alone through faith alone
in Christ alone. That's what I call the drivetrain. If those things are right, you might have
to tolerate some of the other things that aren't nearly as absolutely critical as those
are. PHIL: Now what if your pastor affirms all
of those things, at least gives lip service to it, but she's a woman who believes… JOHN: Well that…I mean, that isn't even
a discussion…there's no discussion there because the Bible couldn't be more clear on
that. "I permit not a woman to teach, to take authority
over man." That's end of case. That's…look, there are 66 books…you know
this, don't you, Phil? PHIL: I do. You want me to bail you out? JOHN: No, no. Look 66 books written in the Bible, how many
of them are written by a woman? None…none. Esther wasn't written by a woman, neither
was Ruth. Twelve Apostles, none of them was a woman. There's no woman in the Old Testament that
had an ongoing prophetic ministry. No Apostle was a woman. No close follower of an Apostle was a woman. The seventy weren't women. No elder can be a woman because an elder has
to be a one-woman man and the head of his own household. I mean, it's an open and shut case. PHIL: So in your view that's a serious enough
to… JOHN: That is a very serious…yeah, because
there's no pastor there. This is a false pastor. PHIL: Now, not to press, but I have a similar… JOHN: You know, there's water here, I can
get rid of you. PHIL: I have a similar question from someone
who goes to a church that has a pastor is a man and all of that, but the adult Sunday-School
teacher is a woman. JOHN: No, no. A great host, the Old Testament says of the
women who publish the good news. I love the fact that Aquila and Priscilla
instructed Apollos more perfectly in the Way. I think women can give biblical counsel, they
can give biblical instruction. They can speak to men about the truth. They can do that in an informal setting, in
home settings, and all kinds of social constructs. But when it comes to the formal life of the
church, the teaching responsibility by divine design is to be in the hands of men. Look, I'm not a chauvinist about that, that's
just what Scripture says. And it backs it up by the utter absence of
women in those roles in any way in Scripture's history. PHIL: What are your thoughts about contemplative
prayer and the whole spiritual development movement, you know the Dallas…? JOHN: That's just a lot of bunk. PHIL: All right, so JOHN: You know, it is. It's just…look, it's sort of a contemplating
your navel, intuitive spirituality, digging deep into find your spiritual core and your
spiritual center which is nonsense, but they throw Bible words at it, words like Jesus,
God, Holy Spirit. PHIL: There's also even a dangerous aspect
of mysticism there… JOHN: Oh it is mysticism. The assumption is that spiritual truth is
somewhere inside of you and that is not true. Spiritual truth is outside of you, it is external
to you. It is in a book, outside of you. It is not in you. You can contemplate yourself all you want,
you can go sit on a rock in the middle of nowhere and think and you will find in you
no source of divine revelation whatsoever because divine revelation is external to you,
it's external to every human being, it's in a book that God wrote. And when you put the book down and start looking
into your own brain, all you're going to do is be led down a black hole. So…but everybody's into spiritual formation. I was looking at a church website the other
day and it proclaims itself to be an evangelistic church and an orthodox church, happened to
be a Presbyterian church. And the whole website was about spiritual
formation. And one of the things that they were offering
was dance class in order that you can learn to get in the rhythm of the Holy Spirit. I mean, that's just…that's what J.I. Packer called zany. I mean, that's just crazy stuff. But that's what happens when you start trying
to poke around inside of yourself for spiritual truth when it's all contained in one book
and that book is external to you, and the spiritual truth resides in that book, if you
never lived, or if you never had a thought…it's the external truth that we must understand
because there's nothing inside until that truth gets in our minds. And then you can go into your mind and draw
out biblical truth. But if you're trying to look deeper than what's
in your brain, which is what this is about. I don't get it, you know me, I'm about as
mystical as a rock. But I don't even know what they're doing and
I don't know what they come up with but all of that mystic stuff, Dallas Willard and others
like him, confuse people because they use the name of Jesus and they talk about God
and they use Bible verses. PHIL: With that as a background, let me read
you this question, it comes from someone signed, "Worried Mother." "My 13-year-old son is at a Christian school
which will be implementing the disciplines based on Richard Foster and Dallas Willard's
teaching. Is it dangerous for my son to be exposed to
teaching, even if we deconstruct these lessons at home?" JOHN: Well I think if you're good enough at
deconstructing him at home, it can be a teaching opportunity for you. I don't know what your other options are. I understand the value of Christian education. I also understand the confusion among Christian
leaders who pick up this kind of stuff and just pass it on as if it were valid. But, you know, the responsibility to raise
your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord belongs to you, right? It's yours. You can send them to public school, but there
you're probably going to have to deconstruct a whole lot of other stuff if you send them
to the public school. So you've got to decide what you want to deconstruct. This is a grief to me because it's just embedded
itself in Christian colleges and in churches and all kinds of Christian organizations,
Christian schools. I see it popping up, and the best way to understand
it is kind of what we said earlier, it assumes that somehow spiritual truth can be found
within you intuitively. Whatever form it takes, that's what it is. PHIL: Before we move too far away from the
question about woman, here's another question. This is the last one, I promise. I'm just giving you the ones that came in
here. JOHN: No, I know, you're not responsible for
any of this stuff. PHIL: I'll read you the question. I've heard that you have an office of deaconess
at Grace Community Church. I also believe there's a biblical principle
that holds that a woman should not be in a position of spiritual authority over a man. So how do you explain how the office of deaconess
functions? Are deaconesses exercising their office over
only women? It seems like a bit of a tightrope to me,
so I would just like to understand better how it works. JOHN: In the first place, we don't…it's
not an office…it's not an office. It's not a position. We simply recognize that some women serve
in remarkable and wonderful ways in the life of the church. Like Phoebe in Romans 16 who was a woman who
was called a deacon. You can take the "ess" off it. There are women in the New Testament…the
word "deacon" means servant. We have hundreds of women here who are servants
of the church. They don't have authority over anybody. They don't meet, they don't make decisions,
they don't have committees. They don't have councils. They aren't given problems to solve. They serve. We have men who are deacons, they don't meet
as a group, they don't have authority, they don't have power. They don't vote on anything. In that sense…when you're talking about
an office, you're talking about some kind of official identification, office official,
same root word. So we recognize in this church that the Apostle
Paul said there will be in the church elders, right? And the distinction of elders is that they
are skilled teachers. There will also be highly qualified men who
will serve the church…who will serve the church. In Acts 6 they waited on tables, right? They fed the widows. They can be men, they can be women. In the New Testament there are some of them
men, some of them were women. They are the servants of the church. And I think it's important to identify them
as such. It's not as if they've been elevated to a
decision-making office in the church. But on the other hand, everybody who serves
in the church makes the decisions necessary to the effectiveness of their service. You have to evaluate a situation, find a need,
meet a need, pull together whatever has to happen. Look, you've been here now for four days maybe
now, were you served by people around here? Those people are the deacons and the deaconesses
of the life of this church. They don't bear the authority that the elders
would bear in this church. They carry the burden of service in this church. They are the life of this church. They are the joy of this church. They are the love expressed in this church. They're the examples in this church to all
the others who see their level of service. PHIL: One of the big debates that's sort of
out there today is about the propriety or impropriety of multi-site churches where they'll
use video to broadcast the pastor's message to various locations in a community. And now even all around the United States. What are your thoughts about multi-site churches
where one pastor teaches a group of churches by video? JOHN: I don't think there's any place in the
life of the church for a flat screen pastor, I really don't. Look, if you're going to be a pastor, what
is required of you if you're going to be a pastor? You go to 1 Timothy 3, you go to Titus 1,
and it lays it out. Your life has to be above reproach. You have to have proven that you're the leader
of your family. You have to be hospitable. You have to be not given to anger. It gives you all those qualifications. How do you know anything about a flat-screen
face three miles away from where you are? What kind of shepherding is that? What kind of pastor is that? That's no pastor at all. That is not a pastor. I've heard those kind of discussions. I've heard those debates. And I think it's a sad day when people are
being taught by someone about whom they know absolutely nothing. Now you can read a book by somebody you don't
know. You can listen to a radio program by somebody
you don't know. You can listen to a tape and all of that. But when you talk about the shepherd of your
soul, this is somebody that has to be a part of your life, that you trust and you know
and you're in a community of people that have learned to love him and trust him and know
his family. I think it's a tragic thing. I think if you drove me to a kind of bottom
line here, and you've been known to do that, I would say…I'm so glad for the revival
for Reformed Theology. I'm so glad that there are lots of people
that are getting in on Reformed Theology and talking about imputed righteousness and talking
about justification. I'm really glad for all of that. I'm glad for a grasping of Reformed soteriology. But, it is a terribly incomplete movement
because they have such an abysmal understanding of ecclesiology, they don't understand the
church. Many of these mega places with these flat-screened
kind of hi-tech rock concert places are anything but a church. They're a repeated event. They're typically a repeated youth event. It doesn't have anything to do with the church. They're not multi-generational. They don't care for people from the cradle
to the grave. They're not pouring themselves into the lives
of people, shepherding people. They're talking about how much broader they
can get rather than how much deeper they can get. How many more people can they touch superficially,
not how many people can they touch personally and deeply. That's not pastoring…that is not pastoring. I'm deeply concerned about the sad state of
ecclesiology. And I will just tell you, talking to our friend
Al Mohler about this and he said, there are about four or five of these kinds of things
that are very successful and all the rest of them are real small, sort of unsuccessful
efforts at repeating this. That is not a biblical model for being a pastor. People need to be shepherded by the man that
God puts into their life as their shepherd wherever they are and it doesn't need to me
living here, doing it somewhere else in America. PHIL: You've also expressed concern, especially
lately, the past two or three years, about these growing sort of personality cults that
are wrapped around some of these men and, you know, the idea if you're not a rock star
pastor, then you haven't really attained whatever. Talk about that. JOHN: First of all, you've been worshiping
with us, right? For four days. What you experience in the way we worship
here would have been exactly what you would have experienced if you had been here twenty
years ago…or thirty years ago. You heard me preach. What you heard me say today and the last three
days, you could have heard me do the very same thing thirty-five years ago. We pay absolutely no attention to the pop
culture, we couldn't care less. We don't care what they're doing. (applause) It's irrelevant. We have a fixed point of reference, the Word
of God. And I don't want to link arms with the culture. I want to link arms with the history of the
church. I want to quote the great theologians. I want to sing the great hymns that generations
of believers have sung and the reason we're still singing them is because they were so
good. I want to link arms with the past. I want people to know that we're some…we're
a part of something that is multi…multi-national, multi-generational and multi-millennial. It goes back several thousand years. I don't want people to think we just invented
this. I can tell you everything I need to know about
a guy who says he's a pastor by how much he gives honor to the work of Christ through
faithful men through the history of the church and how much he wants to be among them and
not an invention of his own. It's just a problem. I mean, look around at Grace Church, we've
been taking in people, we often say this, I don't know, what 75-80 new members a month
for years and years and years and we think about 85 percent of them are thirties and
under and have been for at least ten years. You know what? The Lord is reaching those people in a church
that pays no attention to pop culture. We don't drink beer openly, publicly. We're not trying to play with the culture. We don't want people to walk in here and say,
"Wow, this is cool. This feels comfortable to me. It's like a nightclub." We want people to talk in here and say, "What
in the world is this? I've never experienced anything like this
anywhere in my life." We don't want the world to come in, we want
heaven to come down. (applause). PHIL: That's good. (laughter) Now…I'm going to write that down
before I forget it. On the other hand, because of your longevity
and influence… JOHN: What did you mean by that? (laughter) PHIL: I mean, you've been here for 43 years. JOHN: Oh, okay. PHIL: Which is almost unheard of in our culture,
and that's a shame, but it's true. And you've got this vast influence on the
radio and all. Some would say, you know, you have a kind
of celebrity status of your own. Does that make you uncomfortable? What are your thoughts about that? JOHN: Look, I…I just want to be a teacher. I just want to be a preacher and teacher of
the truth. I don't want anything other than that. I do understand, as I mentioned to you, we
were talking a little bit about Romans, that people understand what Isaiah meant when he
said, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news." I understand…I understand that we all love
whoever brought us the truth, whoever brought us the gospel, whoever taught us the gospel. You know, you heard Monica say that I had
a special place in her life because God used me to bring the truth. That's really not me. That's not about me. That's really about the truth. I'm just the delivery guy. I'm just kind of the waiter, the Lord cooks
the meal. So I don't really, you know, I'm happy to
be called "John." I don't want any more than that. I don't know how to answer that question. It's a little….it's a little embarrassing,
you know. PHIL: Yeah, that will answer the question…yeah. JOHN: People are so kind to me and I'm not
quite sure I get it all. I'm not sure I quite understand it all, how
you view me because I'm just trying to be a teacher. And when I came to Grace Church many years
ago, people would say to me, "Tell us how to preach. Tell us how you preach." You know, I couldn't even do that. Some of you remember Fred Barshaw, he would
always say, "Don't ask him, he doesn't know why he does what he does." And I don't really know. I don't know…if it's interesting to you,
I don't understand why it is. I don't really know. There's not a technique. I don't work on it. Somebody asked me one time if I practiced
my sermons in front of a mirror. Are you kidding? So, I just do what I do and the Lord has done
what He has done and I will tell you this, that if anybody is surprised at what the Lord
has done, they're not as surprised as I am because I remember my son Mark one day sat
down on the bed with me and he said, "Dad," he said, "you know, I don't understand you." He was a teenager. I said, "Really, what is it?" He said, "You know, when you get in the pulpit
and preach, you are really something, but the rest of the time, you're not really very
special at all." He was absolutely dead serious. PHIL: A lot of us have noticed that about
you. (laughter) JOHN: I don't know. So, I just…I just want to be faithful to
do what God's given me to do and I'm thankful for the strength to endure. You know, I've been healthy, just a few incidents
through the years. And I love what I do. I love it as much now as I ever have. And I'm just very thankful to be able to do
it. I think the key to this thing, you know, I've
said this many times to you, I was concerned from the very beginning about the depth of
my ministry, and I said if I take care of the depth of my ministry, I can leave the
breadth of it to God. You know, if it's something He can use, then
He'll take it where He wants it to go. So I've never done anything to take it anywhere. I don't do anything with tapes, or CDs or
downloads or…I don't do that. I don't go places and set up events for myself. I just stay here all these years here in this
pulpit week after week after week. And I think there's something about that,
that puts honesty into your life because the people in this church aren't under any illusions. They know me. They know my wife. They know my kids. They know my grandkids. They know my family. I'm not a celebrity to them. I'm just their shepherd with strengths and
weaknesses. They all know and understand that. And they see me for who I am and I need that. I think it's a dangerous thing to go on the
road and begin to believe your press clippings. I think you need the accountability of a congregation,
leadership and men around you that care for you and love you, and speak into your life. And that's been the genius of being here is
having friends like you and you tell me things frequently that I don't particularly care
to hear. (laughter) But you always do it kindly. PHIL: I try to be kind. JOHN: You are. You're a true friend. PHIL: All right. Let's change subjects. JOHN: By the way, well before…I can tell
you, the best part of ministry is the friendships. And we have all these people…how long have
you been here? PHIL: Nearly 30 years. JOHN: Thirty years. These are deep friendships. I mean, we love each other around here and
it permeates through the congregation as well. And that's the joy of ministry. And we don't live with some kind of illusions
that we're something special. We all have gifts. We all do what we do. And God takes it where He wants to take it. PHIL: Right. Let's do change subjects. What is your perspective on the belief that
the Holy Spirit leads us by nudging us or whispering to us or giving us dreams, things
like that? JOHN: Well, I think the Holy Spirit does lead
us but there is no way to perceive that that's happening. Right? PHIL: Yeah. JOHN: I don't have a red light that goes on
on my head and it goes around and around and around when the Holy Spirit's leading. I don't know when the Holy Spirit's leading. I don't know when I'm just following my impulses
or my desires or whatever. I have no mechanism to know that. But in retrospect I see that. And I categorize that in the providences of
God. PHIL: Right. JOHN: I just put that in the providence…my
life is just one amazing act of divine providence after another, after another, after another,
after another, after another, every single day of my life unfolds in ways that are so
well planned by the divine mind that I…I'm in, you know, a sort of exhilaration day after
day after day over what happens in my life. So I don't know when the Spirit is leading
at the time. The Spirit is leading…I can say, "You know,
I think I ought to go preach over there." I do that every day, you know. Friday they brought like, I don't know, a
big list of people who want me to come and speak and what did I do? Did I, you know, begin to go into some kind
of mantra and say, "Ohm…." And see if I can induce the Holy Spirit to
know what to do? No. I just look at it and say, "Well, I can't
do that. I don't think I can do that. That wouldn't be a priority. Maybe I should do that. And you know what happens if I just am open
and want to do God's will, it's amazing how in retrospect I can look back and say, "Wow,
it was absolutely critical that I be there because look what happened when I got there,
and this happened and that led to this, and this led to that." That's how my whole life has unfolded. So there's no mechanism that we possess that
tells us at the moment when the Holy Spirit is leading us and in some supernatural way. But that in retrospect we will be able to
discern by the providences of God that unfold. PHIL: Yeah, that's a great distinction to
make. I think the first time I ever heard you preach,
the message you did was your message on how to know the will of God. And you basically said, look, line up with
Scripture, I'm giving you the really short version, line up with Scripture and then do
what you want to do, as long as you're being obedient to what God has clearly commanded,
He'll lead you through providence. And I think the mistake a lot of Charismatics
make is looking for special revelation when God doesn't lead us by giving us new special
revelation. He leads us by providence, but He's just as
active in leading us. JOHN: How different would my life be if you
weren't in it? It would be dramatically different. It would be profoundly different. PHIL: Right. JOHN: Grace To You wouldn't be what it is. The books that I write that you edit wouldn't
be what they are. PHIL: And my life would be profoundly different. JOHN: The clarity of theology that we hammer
out together and yet how, from a human standpoint, serendipitous was the fact that we met. PHIL: Exactly. JOHN: Right? PHIL: Well in fact, I almost did… JOHN: And the fact that you put me in a motel
in the dead winter in Chicago, a motel with no heat and I had to take a carpet off the
floor to put on the bed to stay warm all night. PHIL: Yeah…yeah. And then I also I booked you into a lousy
accommodation in Indio once, too. JOHN: Thank you very much, on my anniversary. PHIL: That's right… JOHN: With my wife. PHIL: It was your thirtieth anniversary, no
less, wasn't it? JOHN: Yeah. PHIL: And…I almost…you talk about how
serendipitous it was, I almost didn't come to hear you the first time. You were… JOHN: No, no, I know that story. PHIL: Yeah. JOHN: Yeah, I was speaking at Moody, he was
on the Moody Press, and he made a crack to somebody…"I'm not going to go hear some
lame-brain talk about the will of God, everybody that comes to Moody talks about the will of
God." And then he had this eye on this…wait…never
heard of me. Then he had his eye on this girl named Darlene
and she comes up to him and says, "Oh, Philip, would you like to come to chapel and hear
John MacArthur?" "Oh yes…yes." (applause) Right? PHIL: That is exactly what happened. I never heard of him, and he's John MacArthur
Jr., a fifth generation preacher. And I said, "You know, somebody should tell
Junior that everybody who speaks at Moody talks about God's will for your life." JOHN: Oh man. And then, you know, we hit it off and then
you worked on the book on the family and then we drove to Minneapolis, remember that eight-hour
drive and we became friends. And I invited you here and now my whole life
is like that. God has surrounded me with people like that. You know, just constantly. I'm not really interested in mystical stuff. I don't expect the Holy Spirit to give me
special impulses or special revelations. PHIL: Yeah, I have a similar question from
someone who is asking about Bible study and this applies there as well. What is the balance between the Holy Spirit's
illumination and our need to study a passage with commentaries and teachers, and things
like that? JOHN: Well the Holy Spirit never illuminates
anything to me that I don't understand. You've got to understand it before the illumination
kicks in. There is a certain illumination that's salvific,
in other words, being regenerated, is in itself the source of illumination. When I pick up the Bible and I read God, Christ,
the Holy Spirit, sin, man, redemption, blah, blah, blah…I get it. Right. So there's a generic kind of illumination
in revelation. And you could leave it at that level. You could go to the milk of the Word and say,
"Okay, I've been illuminated on the milk of the Word, I get it, I understand the simple
things of Scripture, you know, as many as received Him, became the sons of God." And so forth. I can read that and understand it. I can read other things and understand them. But for me to dig down and to enjoy the full
illuminating possibilities of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I have to dig
deep into the Scripture. It's what I…it's what I grasp that He illuminates. It's what I understand that He illuminates. So yes, there's a sense in which I am illuminated
enough to understand Scripture at its basic level, the milk level, as Paul would call
it. But to get the meat level, I've got to dig
down in it. And you just experienced that this week, right? You know, going through a passage and I'm
saying things you haven't thought about with regard to that passage, right? But now all of a sudden when I say it the
way I say it, you say, "Wow, I understand that. I get it. The light goes on, I get it." That's because you're being illuminated which
means the life-giving Spirit is awakening you to the reality of that truth that you
now understand in a fresh way. PHIL: And sometimes a teacher like you is
one of the instruments the Spirit uses to illuminate us. JOHN: Yeah, it can be a book, it can be a,
you know, listening to someone speak. Sure. I mean, the Lord has given teachers to His
church for that. PHIL: I don't want to go overtime. Do we have time for one more question? JOHN: Okay. PHIL: This is a good one and something that's
never occurred to me and it's right up your alley. Philippians 4:6 says, "Be anxious for nothing." When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane,
He was sweating blood in anticipation of His death. What was the difference between the sinful
anxiety of fear and what Jesus was feeling? JOHN: All the difference in the world. He didn't have any sinful anxiety. His were purely holy anxieties. What else would you expect Him to do? The infinitely holy One, the eternally holy
One about to be made sin. Rather than that being an illustration of
Jesus being tempted by sin, that is the absolute opposite of that. People say, "Well when Jesus said, 'Father,
let this cup pass from Me?' didn't that show a weakness? Wasn't He succumbing to temptation?" Quite the contrary. If He hadn't said that, we might question
His holiness. Do you get that? If He didn't say that, we'd wonder if He was
as holy as He is. What else would you expect Him to say? This is horrific, this is incomprehensible
to Him. He is giving us an insight by that reaction
in the Garden, sweating great drops of blood, as it were, to the fact that sin was so repulsive
to Him that His anxieties were anxieties over His own holiness, the very opposite of ours. PHIL: All right, one more question I have
to answer…ask, rather, and you have to answer. When you left for the summer, you said you
were going to go away, think about what you're going to preach next. What are you going to preach next, now that
you're finished with the New Testament? JOHN: You know, it just kind of got away from
me and I came up with so many things, I'm still trying to narrow them down. But I've been asked by a lot of people to
do the Old Testament. So I'm working on a series in the Old Testament,
obviously I can't go through the whole Old Testament. So…but I can do this. I'm going to call it "A Road to Emmaus Series." On the road to Emmaus it says that Jesus beginning
at Moses, that's the Law and the Prophets, that's the Prophets and the holy writings
that's all the rest of the Old Testament. Those are the three categories of the Old
Testament. Spoke to them of the things concerning Himself. So where did He go in the Old Testament? Where did Jesus go on the road to Emmaus to
speak to them from the Law, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings about Himself? Well if you look at the Old Testament and
you start to look for all the places that Christ appears in the Old Testament, you pretty
well can do a mountain peak through the whole Old Testament. So that's what I'm going to do. And do you know where Christ first appears
in the Old Testament? Genesis 1:1, and then Genesis 3:15. He is the seed that bruises the serpent's
head. And then He is the seed promised to Abraham
in Genesis 12. And so we're going to do those kind of peaks. I also think I would like to maybe finish
the book of Genesis, do some character studies there. I want to do some messages on eternal punishment
because I think that's called into question today. We've been talking about redoing the series
on the family, given that we have a generation of people who desperately need to understand
that teaching and there are a few other things on my mind as we go. But just the idea of going through the Old
Testament in a Christological fashion could occupy a number of years. I've got sheets and sheets of… PHIL: Yeah, it sounds like you've got enough
to keep you busy for another 43 years. (applause). JOHN: That's not going to happen. You know, one of the good things in this,
you know, the Lord did allow me to finish the New Testament and I now am really closing
in on the finishing of the commentary series. So I'm working on Luke volume 3, there will
be four volumes in Luke, and then Mark will either be one or two. So, you know, after all these many, many years,
and you were in on the beginning of that. You remember…I forget what year that was. PHIL: That was 1981, and that was the first
time I met you face-to-face. What I described earlier was the first time
I heard you speak. But I went to a meeting with you and I think
about seven editors at Moody Press. JOHN: I remember that meeting. PHIL: That was the day and I thought if I
have a chance at the break or afterwards, I'm going to suggest to you that you do a
book on Lordship Salvation. And you said, "I already plan to and I'm going
to title it, The Gospel According to Jesus. And our relationship took off from there. So… JOHN: And in case you didn't know, Phil is
really the one who drives and directs Grace To You. So you owe a great debt to him for his ministry. (applause) PHIL: Close us in prayer. JOHN: No, you…I've prayed a lot this morning. PHIL: Okay. Let's pray. Lord, we're so grateful for this week, filled
with so many blessings, so many reminders of your grace and goodness and so many good
things from Your Word. We pray, Lord, as we go from here that each
of us would take with us what we've learned and put it to work for Your glory and for
the glory of Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.


text:
Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, discussed how the US can once again become a space-faring, innovative society, as well as various space-related topics such as asteroids. Though the Space Race, in which the US competed with the Soviet Union, was fueled by militaristic concerns, he argued that the prospect of economic return could be a strong motivator for new space exploration. NASA could serve as an inspiration for innovation, so that people will "invent a tomorrow that we don't have today," he said, adding that NASA could assure America's economic strength in the 21st century. Other countries have begun to surpass the US in their space exploration, investing in the technological infrastructure, and reaping the benefits that the inspiration is bringing to their populace, while America has become complacent, he commented.
Regarding the current move toward private space enterprise, Tyson pointed out that NASA has engaged private companies since the 1960s, such as Grumman who made the lunar excursion module that landed on the moon. Exploiting the efficiencies of free enterprise can help NASA advance the frontiers, he noted. Yet it must be NASA rather than private companies that leads and paves the way for space exploration, he suggested, explaining that initial explorations have unquantified risks that can't return an investment for businesses.
Tyson talked about different types of asteroid and meteorite impacts such as the one that recently hit Russia. Interestingly, the area of destruction can actually be larger when the object detonates in the air (such as Tunguska), as it covers a larger swath than when it hits the ground, he said. Looking out over the next 10 years, he hopes we'll find traces of life, past or present, on Mars, though he believes it won't be found on the surface which is too exposed to energy from the sun that is destructive to complex molecules. Tyson hosts his own show, StarTalk Radio, which explores the intersection between pop culture and science.
Robert Davi In Studio
In the first hour, actor/singer Robert Davi joined George in the studio for a conversation about his varied career, as well as his paranormal experiences. He recounted how as a college student he became afflicted with a devastating auto immune disorder, and was hospitalized. But after receiving a pair of rosary beads blessed by Padre Pio, he was cured and out of the hospital within a week. Davi talked about a number of the roles he's played such as the villain Franz Sanchez in the James Bond movie License to Kill (he'll next be seen in The Iceman), as well as his musical career in which he's interpreted songs from the Great American Songbook, which he praised for its lyricism and storytelling.
News segment guests: Jerome Corsi, John Hogue

subset: commoncrawl


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WASHINGTON (AP) — As tropical storm Isaac bears down on the Gulf Coast, there should be plenty of money — some $1.5 billion — in federal disaster aid coffers, thanks, in part, to a new system that budgets help for victims of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods before they occur.
It's a system that Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee-to-be for vice president, had hoped to scrap as a way to make his House GOP budget look smaller by about $10 billion a year. Politely, party elders told him no way, at least for now.
The Obama administration was the driving force behind the new disaster funding scheme and made it part of last summer's hard-fought budget pact, even though President Barack Obama himself had given short shrift to budgeting for disasters prior to a spate of them early last year, including tornadoes that ripped through Missouri and Alabama.
Congresses and administrations, after all, always had been fairly forthcoming with whatever disaster aid was needed after the fact.
The new system means disaster aid will not have to compete with other programs for financing, nor have to rely on less certain ad hoc funding at the height of a crisis.
Instead, disaster money was added on top of the official budget "cap" in line with the amounts budgeted in prior years.
It had been a different story earlier in the year as the government's chief disaster fund almost ran dry, thanks to foot-dragging by the White House and demands by tea party House Republicans that disaster aid be partly "paid for" with cuts to programs that Obama favored. The administration instead let the political pressure build as disaster accounts dwindled, sparking the ire of both his GOP rivals and allies like Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., but turning the tables in its favor.
Months after agreeing to the new regime, Republican leaders still had to turn to procedural maneuvers to orchestrate passage of $8.8 billion in disaster money in keeping with the agreement. Ryan, the House Budget Committee's chairman, was among 66 Republicans opposing the measure.
But, as has been proven time after time — especially as tornadoes and hurricanes rip through politically conservative states — even the sturdiest tea party supporters like the government when it comes to doling out money to storm victims for motels and other temporary housing and to help with house repairs.
Simply put, when disaster strikes, politicians respond — sometimes to the dismay of conservatives who see politicians milking disasters to win projects that couldn't fly on their own, like Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's failed bid six years ago for $700 million to relocate a rail line along the Gulf Coast so his state could build a new east-west highway.
The new system makes it more difficult for lawmakers to try such maneuvers, though such "pork barrel" tactics largely have been halted anyway with the GOP takeover of the House, with Republicans instituting a ban on so-called earmarks.
Many House Republicans, however, are unhappy with the new approach. Ryan earlier this year tried to gut it and eliminate $10 billion a year in disaster costs when putting together the House GOP budget.
But in doing so Ryan sideswiped a still-powerful Appropriations Committee that was still stinging from $19 billion in Budget Committee-induced cuts to last year's deal. Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., protested to GOP leaders and won a gentleman's agreement that the new system would stay in place, at least for this year.
However, Ryan's point of view might still prevail if Mitt Romney defeats Obama in November.
What Ryan proposes is that when disaster strikes, lawmakers scour the rest of the budget for savings to pay for rebuilding homes, roads and schools and helping small businesses. Put another way, instead of being an excuse to increase spending, disasters would offer an opportunity to make further cuts elsewhere in the government.
That's easier said than done. The portion of the budget that would face cuts — the day-to-day operating expenses for federal agencies — already has absorbed several rounds of cuts under GOP control of the House and faces almost a decade's worth of tight limits under last year's budget deal.
And should a huge disaster like Hurricane Katrina hit, it's simply unrealistic to find cuts of the magnitude required. Katrina ended up costing taxpayers more than $60 billion. Much of that money was approved when images of hurricane victims were still fresh in the minds of lawmakers and voters and as the George W. Bush administration continued to reel from its initial botched response.
It's also easier to summon the political fortitude to demand that disaster relief be paid for when the area you represent hasn't been hit. In particularly bad disaster years, political pressure accumulates as the toll of Midwestern floods, Southern tornadoes and coastal storms is felt by more and more voters and their representatives.
That's exactly what happened last year in the wake of Hurricane Irene, which prompted liberals like Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and tea party-backed Republicans like Rep. Nan Hayworth of New York to form a coalition to press for aid.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
Ryan opposed new, Obama-backed disaster aid regime
WASHINGTON (AP) — As tropical storm Isaac bears down on the Gulf Coast, there should be plenty of money — some $1.5 billion — in federal disaster aid coffers, thanks, in part, to a new system that budgets help for victims of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods before they occur.


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I would also like to point out that when speaking with the other supplier, to discuss the options they could provide, the service was dire and I was faced with someone at the end of the phone not really understanding my very simple and clear instructions! I was very disappointed yet reassured that the service Broadbean had to offer far exceeded the competition.
From start to finish a first class service!"


text:
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The names and reputations of Toni Kroos, Mesut Ozil and Thomas Muller will mean nothing to Corry Evans on Tuesday when Northern Ireland aim to upset the world champions.
Michael O'Neill's side conclude their Group C campaign at Euro 2016 in Paris with a game against Joachim Low's Germany, who sealed their fourth World Cup title in Brazil two years ago.
When Evans and his colleagues look across the tunnel at the Parc des Princes they will see some of the game's most decorated and renowned players, yet the Northern Ireland midfielder insists their standing within the game cannot be considered.
"When you're on the pitch, it doesn't matter," the 25-year-old said.
"In the build-up to the games the media builds these players up, but when you actually get on a pitch and in and around them it's just another game to me personally.
"Obviously you respect your opponent, but you've got to earn respect from them, play your own game, just try and do what we do best and get in and around these players and make it difficult for them."
O'Neill's team have been able to nullify some of the continent's most recognised players already in France, keeping Poland's Robert Lewandowski in check before silencing Andriy Yarmolenko and Yevhen Konoplyanka when they defeated Ukraine.
One thing they have not been able to keep quiet is the noise from the stands, though, with the high decibel levels contributing to the confusion in the last game when neither Evans or Stuart Dallas knew if they were being withdrawn for Paddy McNair late on.
"It was so loud on the pitch on Thursday you couldn't actually hear and it got lost with communication," Evans explained.
"It is very loud, especially the other night when we were scoring the two goals, the noise was incredible.
"On the pitch as well, the lads have even discussed it, and I've seen it first hand from Michael trying to get information on to the players against Poland – he's shouting, his lungs are hurting, no one can hear him. It's so loud, it's so hard unless you're very close to someone to get information on.
"Personally I haven't played in a stadium that loud before. To be fair, Blackburn v Burnley is very loud, that's really loud, but these last two games have been something else, the noise the fans have been making."
On the field, the key could be how Northern Ireland begin in Paris, with a sluggish opening contributing to the Poland defeat before a faster start against the Ukrainians helped set the tone.
"Straight from the kick-off Conor (Washington) and Steven (Davis) were pressing and I think we got a corner really early on," Evans added.
"That's when I knew, 'Right, they are going to be rattled here.' And they didn't really seem to recover from that start.
"Credit to the lads, we managed to keep it up for 90 minutes. I just think the Ukrainians didn't really know what to do after that."


text:
Mary Valdes necesitaba un nuevo diseño de página web y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 19 diseños de 12 diseñadores freelance.
We would like a website created where anyone in the nation can come to our site and order Hispanic baked products. The products are shipped frozen but, are baked at the establishment.
Tracy Bakery, Inc.
A website that is clean, easy to navigate but, very professional. It must be able to place orders on lines and have the capability to maintain a clients list of information. We would also like to have a link that provides tipbits on Hispanic History.
We are a third generation; family runned business. We have been in business for over 27 years. We provide Hispanic baked products that are shipped frozen and baked at the customers establishments.
- Headlines
- Shopping cart
- Photos of all product lines
- Capture customers contact information
- Contact us
- Blog
- Tipbits on Hispanic History
- Home Page with History on the business.
- Instructions for Baking products
- We have our logo. They are pastel colors: baby lime green, yellow, pink, blue, beige and the letters are in black.
- No music
- not to busy


text: Searching for USA's "R star" 3 December 2018 Reece Birtles Australia Share this article: By over tightening, or not correctly estimating R-star, central banks are often the cause of recessions. R-star is the biggest issue for financial markets right now, more important than trade wars and diverging major economy growth. R-star is the theoretical and unobservable neutral real rate of interest - effectively the tipping point between expansionary and contractionary economic cycles. Debate shifting to upper bound of rate cycle Following 10 years of extreme monetary policy characterised by quantitative easing and negative real interest rates, the main debate was how to deal with the zero lower bound for US interest rates in a low growth world. Since the end of 2016, strong growth and low unemployment in the US has returned debate to how high the US Federal Reserve (Fed) Funds rate will rise before the economic cycle slows down. At what real interest rate level does growth begin to slow? Past performance is not a guide to future returns. Source: Martin Currie Australia, Factset; as of 30 October 2018. Red bands = decelerating or below-trend growth Impact on market is tanglible The inflection point, from growth to slow down, is critical to major economy growth and financial markets. It will impact bond yields, credit spreads, the Australian dollar and other currencies, global and domestic equities, and equity style factors. The Fed's move from a negative real rate to a neutral real rate in 2018 has so far already caused ructions in emerging market currencies and equities, and is arguably the main reason behind October's global equity market sell-off and the volatility of the US equity market. The fed is on course to find its r-star By over tightening, or not correctly estimating R-star, central banks are often the cause of recessions. With US CPI running at around 2%, the Fed expected to raise rates by 0.25% four times over the next year. The last two economic slowdowns occurred after real rates rose above the 2% level, but most economists believe that R-star in the current market could be well-below its historical theoretical level, and may be sitting at closer to 1%. The Fed Funds rate could easily be closer to 3.25% and real rate above 1% by the end of 2019. Should current market turmoil mean a departure from history? There are a few variables that views of a "new normal" lower R-star could be tested: For example, we ponder: does R-star continue to rise above historical levels because of digital productivity and disenfranchised labour returning to the workforce?; does the trade war and diverging economic growth cause the Fed to instead pause its expected rate rises?; or is R-star actually much lower, as suggested by already slowing auto sales and new housing permits, and we are already very close to the tipping point? What happens next? Equity markets are known for predicting two recessions for every one that occurs. Some sell-offs will be good buying opportunities. We don't know what R-star will be, and when we will reach it, but determining the likely path and the degree to which this is priced across different markets will be key to performance of equity strategies, both in Australia and globally over the next two years. It is why we are currently holding significantly more dry powder in our portfolios than we have for the last 10 years. Important information This information is issued and approved by Martin Currie Investment Management Limited ('MCIM'). It does not constitute investment advice. Market and currency movements may cause the capital value of shares, and the income from them, to fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invested. The opinions contained in this document are those of the named manager(s). They may not necessarily represent the views of other Martin Currie managers, strategies or funds. The information provided should not be considered a recommendation to purchase or sell any particular security. It should not be assumed that any of the security transactions discussed here were or will prove to be profitable.


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That didn't take long.
Nine days after the pro-opposition TV station Globovisión was sold to businessmen rumored to have close ties to the Venezuelan government, the station's new leader was welcomed to Miraflores Palace for a cordial sit-down with President Nicolás Maduro.
"You all know why Globovisión could not come to Miraflores Palace" in the past, Globovisión President Juan Domingo Cordero told reporters after the May 21 meeting. "That's never going to happen again."
Cordero was referring Globovisión's long-running battles with the late President Hugo Chávez, who died on March 5. As the conflict escalated, Chavez's socialist government denied Globovisión reporters access to official events and information and barred government officials from appearing on the station.
Hit with huge government fines, losing money, and facing the probability that its license would not be renewed in 2015, the owners sold a majority stake of Globovisión to Cordero and two other businessmen. Cordero insisted that the new Globovisión would cover all sides of the news while working to reduce political tensions and promote peace. The government, in turn, signaled a truce by allowing Health Minister Isabel Iturria to appear on Globovisión on Tuesday this week.
"The conflict and fascist manipulation exercised by many right-wing elements in this country must end," Vice President Jorge Arreaza, Chávez's son-in-law, told reporters after attending the meeting. "The goal is to have a climate of peace in which the truth prevails."
But some media analysts are troubled by the changes at Globovisión, even as they insist they support fair and balanced news coverage and acknowledge that Globovisión often went overboard in slamming the government and pumping up the opposition.
"You need to have some middle ground. It's never good when a channel supports just one candidate or one political side," Marianela Balbi, executive director of the Caracas-based Institute for Press and Society, told CPJ.
The problem, Balbi and others say, is that nearly all the other TV stations in Venezuela are either run by the state and serve as government mouthpieces or have shied away from critical coverage of the government because they fear reprisals. Globovisión was a lone government watchdog on TV and one of the few outlets where opposition viewpoints could reach a mass audience. It paid a steep price, including multimillion-dollar fines, for its editorial position.
In this lopsided TV landscape, Globovisión's decision to chart a more moderate course could substantially reduce air time for government critics. Balbi pointed out that Globovisión has already cancelled two programs that often slammed government officials--"Aunque usted no lo crea" (You won't believe this) and "Usted lo vió" (You saw it).
Globovisión has also discontinued its policy of providing wall-to-wall live coverage of speeches and press conferences by opposition politicians, such as Henrique Capriles, who lost to Maduro in last month's presidential election.
"No media outlet is obligated to broadcast live or dedicate time to the declarations of a politician," Globovisión said in a communiqué Monday.
Last week, Globovisión announced that opposition legislator Ismael García would no longer anchor the "Álo, Venezuela" news program. On Monday, Francisco Bautista, a part-time communications consultant for Capriles who hosted "Buenas noches," a talk show critical of the government, announced on his Twitter account that he had been ousted from Globovisión and criticized "the censorship they are imposing."
In its communiqué, Globovisión said García left by mutual accord and that Bautista was removed from his show for publicly criticizing García's departure without first speaking with Globovisión executives about the issue.
As Globovisión distances itself from the opposition and aims for more balanced coverage, there is no sign that pro-government TV stations are following suit by toning down official propaganda and opening their microphones to critics, said Marcelino Bisbal, who heads the post-graduate journalism program at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas.
For now, most Globovisión journalists are staying put, including several marquee names. For example, the staunchly right-wing Leopoldo Castillo continues to host of the popular "Aló, Ciudadano" call-in program and to hammer away at the Maduro government.
"I know there is an information imbalance and that state-run media have become propaganda organs," Castillo told viewers on Monday. "But Globovisión cannot be a battlefield trench that uses those same vices. The country demands something more."
Still, the Globovisión brand was built on combative journalism and the station could lose legions of loyal viewers if it goes too soft on the Maduro government. Indeed, the station immediately lost more than 200,000 of its Twitter followers amid the controversy over the exit of García and Bautista.
Meanwhile, viewers disgruntled with the new Globovisión as well as opposition politicians looking to spread their message may end up relying more and more on social media. When he first learned of Globovisión's new policy not to carry his speeches live, Capriles tweeted the news to his nearly 3.4 million followers.
"There were no press conferences, no microphones, and no reporters involved--just Henrique and his Twitter account," wrote Juan Cristobal Nagel on the widely read blog Caracas Chronicles. "While it is tempting to be frightened at Globovisión's demise, it's possible that we may not need it in the end."


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OTTAWA — Will and Kate will get a special treat Saturday as they take part in a ceremonial tree planting ceremony at Rideau Hall. Serenading the royal couple will be Canada's only Asian bagpiping MP.
Chungsen Leung, the new Conservative MP for the Toronto-area riding of Willowdale, will play two songs for what he guesses will be about "six or seven minutes — hopefully not more."
Leung already has experience playing for the royalty. Twice, Leung has played for Queen Elizabeth II. First in 2002, during her Golden Jubilee celebrations in Ontario and in 2004, Leung was invited to play for the Queen again at her summer retreat at Balmoral Castle.
Leung's received the special invitations, he believes, because he's "an unusual piper."
"I'm one of three Asian pipers. I know of only two (other) Chinese pipers," he told Postmedia News.
The 61-year-old started playing the bagpipes a little over ten years ago after purchasing a chanter (the part of the bagpipe that plays the melody) at a music store while on holiday with his wife and daughter in Scotland.
Leung walked into the store and was captivated by the music of the bagpipe playing with a rock band.
"I said, that is really cool," he recounted.
The clerk, however, was less than enthusiastic about Leung's new-found passion.
"Looking at me, I was Asian, (he said) 'You'll never get a sound (out of the instrument) for a few several months . . . and you'll never be good at it," Leung said in an interview this week.
His family thought he was "crazy."
"They thought I was nuts," he recalled.
Leung admitted the clerk was partially right. Learning the bagpipes were "more difficult than I had imagined."
He tried to teach himself — "that didn't work."
Then he joined a local band of bagpipers from Toronto, a group of firefighters, police officers and military police. He took the challenge seriously enrolling in a week of intensive professional training from world-class pipers at Cape Breton's Gaelic College.
Leung said what he's looking forward to most on Saturday is the chance to meet Prince William.
William and Leung's daughter Elysia both went to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland around the same time. Elysia, however, wasn't at the famous fashion show where William met Kate.
"We are Asian . . . A little bit more modest," he said.


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The ITIL® Service Design training course looks in-depth at the concepts, processes and methods set out in the Service Design phase (definition of the strategy for IT services) of the Service Lifecycle.
To access the free demo of this course and all the other available demos, click here.
The Design process is fundamental for the improvement and the development of services within the IT Lifecycle. This module provides the skills needed to develop, manage and integrate Service Design in the process of IT service management.
IT professionals who want to learn about the concepts and elements of the ITIL Service Design phase of the Service Lifecycle and understand how this phase can be carried out to guarantee the quality of the IT Services offered ( CIO, CTO, manager, supervision team, IT architects, IT consultants, IT auditors, those in charge of security and resources who deal with the processes or the activities of the Service Design Management Phase). The course may also be of interest to those intending to obtain the Expert or Master level qualification.
To take part in the ITIL Service Design course you must have one of the following certificates:
Once you buy the course, you will be required to send the certificate.
To be able to take the exam, it's required to have read and accepted the terms and conditions of the examination institute. The acceptance of such terms and conditions will have to be confirmed when taking the exam.
Official ITIL Service Design certificate*
*For a paper copy of the certificate, please contact us before booking the exam.


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From HaskellWiki
< Hac4
Revision as of 21:50, 28 January 2008 by DuncanCoutts (talk | contribs) (add myself)
Generic Information
You can apply for an account and a project using the community server. You can also apply for a project.
Once you have an account and a project, you upload a Darcs repository as follows. First, initialize your repository on the server:
$ ssh community.haskell.org you@haskell:~$ cd /srv/code/yourproject you@haskell:/srv/code/yourproject$ darcs init
Then, log out and push your repository:
$ darcs push community.haskell.org:/srv/code/yourproject
Who knows about what
A list of projects you've worked on or know fairly well:
|ByteString, xmonad, Data.Binary, lambdabot, hmp3, curses, QuickCheck, HPC, hs-plugins, yi, nobench/nofib, ghc
|ghc, darcs (a little bit)
|skogsbaer (Stefan Wehr)
|hscurses, rhaskell
|ghc (front end mostly), ghci debugger, cabal-install (very little)
|Functional MetaPost, xmonad
|kolmodin (Lennart Kolmodin)
|Data.Binary, Gentoo Linux, Haste (Haskell Turbo-Edit,a Haskell IDE in Haskell), hackport (hackage for Gentoo), hinotify, dbus-haskell
|Heffalump (Ganesh Sittampalam)
|darcs patch theory
|beschmi (Benedikt Schmidt)
|shim (emacs+ghc-api), darcs, xmonad
|conal (Conal Elliott)
|functional reactive programming, DataDriven evaluation, tangible functional programming, graphics, embedded compilers, applicative functors, wxHaskell
|jyp (Jean-Philippe Bernardy)
|yi, collections framework
|dcoutts (Duncan Coutts)
|Cabal (including cabal-install and hackage), ByteString (and some related libs: binary, zlib, bzlib, iconv), Gtk2Hs, c2hs
Active Projects
Please feel free to describe your current project here!
Hackers: dcoutts, nominolo, lennart, bringert, dons


text:
Stealing the Right Tools from Other Languages
Maybe you've already heard this advice: Choose the right tool for the job.
JRuby brings new scope to tis idea. The Java tooling ecosystem is huge, and JRuby gives you the opportunity to add that ecosystem to your toolbox, while still keeping those nice Ruby idioms that you already know. JRuby adds new capabilities to the
require method that enable it to load desired Java libraries using their path:
ruby require 'clojure.jar' java_import 'clojure.lang.PersistentHashMap' map = PersistentHashMap.create(:a => 1, :b => 2)
In this example, you can see how we loaded the Clojure core library and used one of its hashes specialization. JRuby uses a global variable called
$CLASSPATH to store the routes to these new libraries, so they are not mixed with the Ruby load path:
jruby-1.6.5 :001 > require 'clojure.jar' jruby-1.6.5 :002 > $LOAD_PATH => ["."] jruby-1.6.5 :003 > $CLASSPATH => ["file:/Users/david/clojure.jar"]
This environment variable, of course, acts like any other array, so you can also manipulate it from your code:
jruby-1.6.5 :003 > $CLASSPATH << './tomcat.jar' => ["file:/Users/david/clojure.jar", "./tomcat.jar"]
However, the task of managing external dependencies on our own can be tedious and rather complicated when our application starts to grow. Maven is the default dependencies management tool for Java, and JRuby integrates it to make your life easier when you want to use Java tools. If you have Maven set in your path, you'll also be able to install Java libraries as Ruby gems from any Maven repository.
In the previous example, we needed to download the Clojure library and add it to our application. With this integration, we can install it as a Ruby gem, as shown in the example below. The name of our new gem is composed of the prefix
mvn followed by the name of the java package (in this case,
org.clojure) and followed by the name of the package (
clojure), with everything separated by a colon.
$ gem install mvn:org.clojure:clojure Successfully installed mvn:org.clojure:clojure-1.4.0.a.2-java 1 gem installed
Then, you just need to require your new gem in your program:
ruby require 'rubygems' require 'mvn:org.clojure:clojure' java_import 'clojure.lang.PersistentHashMap' map = PersistentHashMap.create(:a => 1, :b => 2)
Fortunately, some Java libraries have already been packaged to work in the Ruby world. In the next section, I'll discuss some examples of how well-known Java tools can be integrated and used by our Ruby applications.
Further Integration With Java Tools
Ruby on Rails is one of the reasons for the success of Ruby as a programming language. But for years, the framework and its environment lacked something that the Java community had owned for decades: high-performing and fully featured application servers. With the arrival of JRuby, the door was opened to bring those application servers to the Ruby world.
This is the case, for instance, with Trinidad, an OSS project I work on. It's a Ruby application server built on top of Apache Tomcat. Trinidad is available as a Ruby gem and bundled with a light version of Apache Tomcat. Trinidad started as an internal project in an environment that mixed Ruby and Java web development, and it is open source. Given this mixed heritage, it was designed to support hybrid environments where both languages work together without losing the simplicity that other well-known Ruby servers had already shown.
Following these principles, it had to be easy to install and execute. After downloading the gem, you can run Trinidad directly from the application's path:
$ cd your_web_application $ jruby -S trinidad
Or add it to the bundler file and run it after loading all the application's dependencies:
ruby source :rubygems gem 'trinidad' $ cd your_web_application $ bundle exec trinidad
Behind this, a fully featured server is hidden, and anyone should be able to customize and configure it. Rather than exposing the user to complicated configuration files written in plain XML, Trinidad offers a Ruby DSL to access those features:
ruby Trinidad.configure do |config| config.port = 4000 config.http = { :maxThreads => 200 } end
Trinidad is only one of many projects developed because of JRuby. Torquebox is another adaptation of a full-featured Java server (JBoss) that brings a whole ecosystem of Java tools to the Ruby world. Redcar is a multiplatform text editor based on JRuby that uses Java graphic libraries and well-known frameworks such as Lucene under the hood. It's written in pure Ruby. There are several other projects that have taken advantage of the best parts of both platforms.
Present and Future
JRuby has become a mature and stable project during last 10 years. In that time, it has evolved into a first-class Ruby implementation. JRuby 1.7 is around the corner. It's going to be the first major version released after Java 7, and it will include support for the new
invokedynamic instruction added to the JVM.
Whether you need a high-performance Ruby, better tools for your day-to-day work and your production systems, or you're just comfortable with the Java ecosystem, you should consider using JRuby.
David Calavera is a member of the JRuby Core Team, the lead developer of Trinidad, and contributor to many other open source projects. He works at Engine Yard as a developer.


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- This event has passed.
Dr. Logger Show
June 23, 2019 @ 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Dr. Logger is an educational ambassador for sea turtles. Through an interactive show, Dr. Logger and "Bob" the sea turtle educate the audience on the life of a sea turtle, by addressing various topics: threats, nesting, anatomy, lifestyle, etc. This show is for guests of all ages, it's interactive with the audience and fast-paced.
Cost: Free
Ages: All
Time: Sundays at 1 p.m.