My ‘regular spammer’ was back today, this time with an IP address from the Anonymizer service.

I’ve reported the bastard, and when I get the time, I’ll look into upgrading the blog to something where I can control the spamvertising a bit better. There are others hitting my blog, but this one seems particularly abusive. E-mail address he’s usually using is:
top@tredgf.com

I finally had to do something with the increasing spam problem for my main address for this domain. I’ve promised a lot of people that I would never retire that address, so I had to do it some other way.

So I signed up with Spamarrest.com. Which means you’ll get a challenge if you send me mail there.

And I put a new address on the site. I know, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to harvest it even with the emailriddler encoding. But for a while I’ll get spam free e-mail - without the challenge thingy, for those who e-mail me from the website.

I’ve been complaining for years about Norway being spiritually dead. Doug especially has heard me sing the blues repeatedly
I’ve been trying to figure out why, and have heard theories for why. Some of them may have some merit. But there’s one theory in particular that I thought up myself that I found particularly interesting.

I’ve noticed how many churches have seemed satisfied with status quo. They seem uninterested in changing their churches, to pressing on, to getting deeper into worship.

A while ago I was at a concert in a pentecostal church. The main pentecostal church in Norway. I considered the concert uneven spiritually, but there’s something the worship leader said then that’s coming back to me now.

He said that this was only the beginning. I don’t remember his exact words, but I got the impression they were talking about developing the youth outreach, and pressing on in music, getting closer to God.

And this weekend I got talked into attending a few services of their fall conference, with the evangelist Johannes Amritzer http://www.missionsos.org/.

I got there a little late on Thursday, and almost immediately I felt like praising the Lord. I don’t know how long they kept it up, but most of the service prior to the sermon was music. And then as they moved into the altercall, they started up with the music again, and kept going - I actually left before they stopped.

The next night it took them a bit longer to get warmed up, but they kept going, and they did get warmed up.

And during the altercall, they kept going until Johannes stopped praying for people. By then most of the audience had left, and many were talking aloud. But they kept going nevertheless, and people were blessed - those who concentrated on the worship.

The last maybe five years, what I’ve seen to be the norm in Norway, has been that worship music is handled by the pastors as though it’s entertainment. I won’t name names here, but I’ve seen so many times that the pastors have gone up on stage when the worship music finally starts to get to the stage where people are closing their eyes and raising their arms. I don’t know why they do it. Maybe they want to look good to the congregation? Anyway, they kill the whole thing. I get so tired of that. It’s an old conflict. I don’t know how many years ago I first heard that conflict voiced by worship leaders, who were frustrated by their pastors.

That’s what I found so interesting at Filadelfia. I don’t know if their regular services are anything like that. Probably not. But they have a (young) tradition of letting the young people have so called Celebration services, where the worship music takes centre stage. And what I witnessed has grown out of that.

I hope it’s contagious..

And the music is, of course, a knockoff of Hillsong. What can I say, I quite like the heavy beat!

You can forget about spamming my blog now. I’ve figured out how to delete your comments directly from the database, so doing it isn’t much work, and will be done summarily.

I don’t know about you, but I like watching Christian TV. OK, so all the preaching heads can get annoying, but if you study the schedule and pick out some favorites, it can be very uplifting.

OK, so many in the US have all these Christian channels on their cable TV. I don’t. It’s available via satellite here, but I don’t always have access to that. However, I do have access to a fast internet connection, so I can watch it anyway.

Here’s how:

http://www.tbn.org/index.php/2.html
Regular vanilla Trinity Broadcasting Channel

http://www.churchchannel.tv/watch/
Church Channel. Mostly preaching heads, but check out Hillsong!

http://www.jc-tv.net/
JCTV. Youth TV, mostly music

It’s easy to access the feeds here. But of course, I have to make it complicated…

I downloaded the asx files, but them in a directory on my harddrive. Made a shortcut to the directory from an easy to access place (desktop, start button). Just double click on one of those files, and Windows Media Player opens with the feed.

The reason I did that, was that it annoyed me to have to open Internet Explorer and have a window playing in IE for JCTV. So I circumvented their irritating site coding.

I also found other sites:

http://www.christian.tv/.
Preaching heads.

http://www.uk-christians.org.uk/tv1.htm
Streaming Christian TV guide from the UK

http://www.miraclechannel.ca/

http://www.gmtn.com/
Gospel Music Channel. Had to go through hoops here to get an asx file. E-mail me if you want it (highest bandwidth).

Technological gadgets today are getting smaller and smaller. This is not news to the gadget freaks or the geeks, but I haven’t seen too many updated smaller guides on travelling with small audio/visual electronics. Hope you enjoy!

http://www.annelisabeth.com/div/organizing3.htm

David Bowie had a concert in Oslo yesterday, and someone threw a lollipop that hit him in his bad eye.

One of our tabloids had a front page photo of the lollipop hitting him narrow end in the eye, and the story said it was stuck between the eyeball and his eyelid.
http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/06/19/400926.html

Someone there said his parents had been at the concert, very close to the stage, and that it hadn’t happened the way Dagbladet said. That the front page photo was manipulated! He said the lollipop had hit him fat end first, and then bounced to the floor.

I don’t know what the truth is, but if this is true, it’s pretty sensational

I accessed the online versions of our tabloids, looking for more info, and came upon the message board of the competing tabloid:

VG message board

I’ve added a new category, Tech.

Most of my English speaking blog entries can be found there. And they’re all about something technical. Really geeky stuff, and some not so geeky.

I’ve often seen celebrities say in the press that tabloids and gossip rags say stuff about them that isn’t true.

Lately I’ve seen one of my friends plastered all over the tabloids for weeks on end. And they’re downright lying about specific things he’s supposed to have done.

Guess that teaches me an important lesson. Even when the press says someone has done something specific, they could be intentionally lying.

Sucks, but this is the world we live in today.

I saw this movie a short while ago. A bunch of us went to see it. When we came out of the theatre, we talked about what we’d do next, but none of us were in the mood to go out. It just didn’t feel right after that movie!

Anyway, some comments about the movie.

What did it for me was seeing Maria suffer with Jesus. That’s what brought it home for me. We’ve seen so much violence in movies, TV and the news, we’ve got blocking mechanisms to prevent us from taking it in.

I was distracted by the filmatographic choices Mel Gibson did. Why did he make those choices, etc.

For the most part they were logical, or at least interesting.

The one thing I had a problem with, until I possibly figured it out, was when Maria mopped up the blood of Jesus after he’d been whipped. Why did she do that? I couldn’t see anything in the Bible about it.

Then, after a while it started dawning on me: It’s a catholic thing.

They see the blood as having power in itself. Remember Ben Hur? When the blood reached his mom and sister, they were healed. I didn’t have a problem with that when I saw it, but I’ve never forgotten.

But the problem I have with it now is that it’s presented as something magical. I don’t believe it is. I think the blood of Jesus is as powerful today as it every was, but I’m not searching for any physical drops of blood that may have survived the millenia. The power is in what it accomplished. Atonement from sin, and healing brought to us. That the Holy Spirit is available to me, both when I got saved and as anointing in my ministry.

It’s a very different concept.

But even though I take issue with some finer points of theology with that movie, I’m glad I saw it, and I’m glad it got made.