Scott Yang's Playground

Zondervan is under attack as it is now cutting cost by printing Bibles in China, where some Christians are still persecuted. I don’t get why Mosher is calling for a boycott of all Chinese goods, as though it would change the human rights condition in China. Nevertheless, (1) Zondervan can still reduce cost by trying [...]

Dr. Mark Thompson has written a thought provoking article on Briefing issue 313, titled “Is there any point being evangelical” (page 19-23). The term “evangelicals” has been quite a controversy – what exactly categorises as being evangelical? What doctrine statement? What denomination? Which evangelist? Since the actual boundary is very difficult to define, one danger [...]

Man. I love Dilbert, a carton about an engineer and his conflicts at work. However, I saw something interesting today. Maybe Scott Adams was trying to tell us about the Total Depravity of mankind. We thought we have free will, but in fact we are all enslaved by our own sinful desire. We cannot do [...]

I had a few email exchanges with this guy last night. He, who has been involved with that church in question for the last 10 years, tried to defend its teaching as being evangelistic and from the Bible. And then he quoted Malachi 3:8-12 to back up his claim, as a “biblical” proof that God [...]

I saw this blog entry today and it is somehow hilarious (thus I also put it in the “humour” category). We all know Calvinism doctrine of TULIP, and we usually also joked about Armenians who based their doctrine on “daisy”, i.e. plucking the petal mumbling “he loves me, he loves me not, he loves …” [...]

My daily bus trip reading has been Matthias Media’s Selected Works of Broughton Knox for the past 2-3 weeks. Some of the articles have really been eye openers to me, and I’m overwhelmed by the detailed analysis in those “short” articles. Five comings of Jesus, doctrine on limited atonement, “angels” – I wish I had [...]

SMH reports statistics showing Australians are 28% creationists and 43% evolutionists, comparing to 50% and 15% in the United States. Women, older people, Liberal voters and Queenslanders were less inclinded to believe in evolution. People earning high salary do not believe that they would go to heaven, neither do they want to go to hell [...]

SMH reports the division between Anglican after PDJ’s remark at UK. I wonder how should we respond to it. Difficult to judge I’ll say, without being there listening to Phillip’s talks. I’ll refrain myself from commenting on it, except (1) media is not always right (2) Bible is always right and authoritative (3) Sydney-sider is [...]

For the last 3 to 4 weeks, Mandarin Bible Fellowship worked through 1 Corinthians 8-10 in our Sunday Bible studies. The main theme is pretty obvious. Gospel is Paul’s agenda as he has been appointed as the Apostle to the Gentiles (1 Corinthians 9:17 “… entrusted with a stewardship”). His will is to save some [...]

The Age argues that evangelical Christians have caused Labor to lose last election. At least that’s is why last week I jumped ship to vote for Liberal for the first time.

Tim Challies shared how he sees the Christianity has been dumbed down to be more appealing to the public. So is the trend of prosperity gospel, as Tim has also mentioned, where it presents the “gospel” in a way that the public wants, i.e. prosperity and blessings, instead of what the public needs, i.e. salvation [...]

Luke 18:18-30, the story of this rich young ruler who has done everything good but was still not willing to give up his wealth to follow Jesus, has been taught again and again at FOCUS and various evangelistic talks that I have been to. The good old illustration of Joshua was to take out his [...]

… heaven or hell, when they die? Tim Challies asked this very question, showed some answers from his research, and generated quite a few interesting discussions. For me, the answer is – “I don’t know”. But I believe that God is just, and he judges everyone without partiality. Yet at the same time he is [...]

Via Anglican Media Sydney. There are two articles on SMH regarding to woman ordination inside the Anglican circle. Muriel Porter from Melbourne argues for woman ordination, as (1) restricting it is too 19th century (2) Bible says men and women are both equal (3) Jesus included women in his disciples (4) Jesus first appeared to [...]

SMH reports Sydney Anglican Diocese is now a bit relaxed on lay minister or junior clergy administering the holy communion. It was a “priestly duty” previously in Anglican. Oops. I thought Josh has been doing that way before he was ordained. It does create tension though, as liberal parishes also do not need to set [...]