Scott Yang's Playground

On Tuesday, City Bible Forum has started a new series on Ecclesiastes with Al Stewart. It was Al’s favourite book, and there was no lack of things that I have learnt or have heard the first time. We looked at 1:1-11 on Tuesday, and the series would be running for the next 7 weeks – [...]

ESV Blog is an excellent resource to those who enjoy reading their English Standard Version Bible, and for the last month or so they ran series of blog entries on translators answering the questions from the readers. Very good read. Again, which Greek text source is used by ESV has been asked. Bill Mounce answered [...]

Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford graduation is interesting. Besides boasting about how him dropping out of college has made proportional spaced fonts and typography a reality on both PC and Mac, also what a wonderful life he has achieved after getting fired by the company he founded. But the most amusing quote has to be [...]

Moved! I have moved this project to my new programming/Internet blog — ESV Popup in Javascript. About ESV Popup is a Javascript you can use on your website that creates a small popup frame to display Bible verses from the English Standard Version Bible, using Javascript Syndication provided by the nice guys from Good News [...]

Open gay bishop of Episcopal Church of US commented that Jesus might be homosexual. It bound to happen, when people started ignoring what was written in the scripture. However, the sad thing is, if his Jesus was practising something that is sinful and unacceptable to God, then how can his salvation be assured, when the [...]

Evangelical Blog Award 2005 voted by readers of Evangelical Underground. Quite interesting to read through them all.

Agnostic journalist Kenneth Nguyen of The Age expressed his opinion on God’s responsibility in the death and destruction caused by the tsunami. He could not match the idea between an all-powerful, benevolent and interventionist God with a disaster in this kind of scale, and wondered whether people’s “faith” would be affected. He cleared assumed that, [...]

Tim Challies has written an interesting and detailed two part article on Sola Scriptura – the reformed doctrine on the Scripture alone. There are also interesting feedback and discussion from the comments. Part 1 and Part 2.

Henry Frost reckoned that he has learnt something from J. Hudson Taylor when he visited North America for the first time in 1888. He learnt a lesson about guidance. It was first prayer, then common sense, and it was child like trust all the way through. (J. Hudson Taylor “A Man in Christ” pp. 310)

Tim Challies had an interesting point looking at “why Jesus died so soon on the cross”. Crucification is not quick and painless, but death preluded by prolonged suffering. At the end he concluded, “Jesus did not lose His life; He gave it.“

Religion News Blog reports the cults/sects situation in China, and how Three Grade of Servants and East Lightning compete to lure Christians away from church. Bad. Really really bad. This again presents the same question – shall I go to three-self, or should I go to house churches? You either subject yourself to the government, [...]

For the last week and half, my commute time reading has been Spurgeon A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore. It is, as the title has suggested, a biography of Charles H. Spurgeon, a famous English evangelical baptist minister in the 19th century. Like a biography, it started with Spurgeon’s life from birth, looked at his [...]

Ever read something that makes you anxious? Finished reading D. Broughton Knox Selected Works Volume II on the bus last week, and indeed that book has provoked much challenges, both theologically and mentally. Something that he wrote about church makes me think hard about my extra-church life.

Some interesting discussion flown out from last Friday’s Simply Christianity course – when is Jesus, the “Christ”? Did Jesus become the Christ before the creation, when God planned salvation for the elected through the death and resurrection of Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9)? Or, did Jesus become Christ when he was born into the house of [...]

Pharisees and Sadducees are two groups of “baddies” presented in the New Testament, as two opposing Jewish groups teamed up plotting against Jesus. But are they really villians? Or just like one of us? Pharisees are like today’s Evangelical Preachers. Zealous. Up right. Familiar with God’s law, follow them ernestly to the nth degree, and [...]