“While we are blinded by carnal desires, the commands of God will appear rigorous; and we shall labour more to explain them away, than to obey them: but if once we adopt them as the rule of our conduct, their beauty and excellence will manifestly appear; and we shall be convinced that, to obey them is, to be truly happy?”
Simeon, C. (1832-63). Horae Homileticae Vol. 15: Romans (474). London.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
My membership expired with Flickr and I decided to switch to using SmugMug for online photos. I’ve always like SmugMug more than Flickr, but when I looked at them a year ago, they had a slower interface and lacking organizational features for arranging photos in an album. Now, they have improved the interface so that it is much faster, and they’ve added the arranging tools that were missing.So from now, on you’ll see most of the photos appearing on SmugMug. It will take some time, but I do plan to move many of the photo’s you see on Flickr onto SmugMug.
http://lombardispot.smugmug.com
If you want to joing SmugMug, use the following discount code and my email address and you’ll get $5 off the price.
email: [email protected]
coupon code: t621gQWrqaGBk
Family,Sunday, December 30, 2007
We had a good Christmas Day. We started with the usual morning routine of coffee, breakfast and showers and then started our Christmas with a devotional time to celebrate the birth of Christ. We used a book from Ligonier Ministries to guide our devotional time. We started with prayer, continued with worship songs, birth of Jesus bible story for Matthew, more scripture readings and worship. Afterwards, the rest of family gathered to have lunch and open presents. I don’t have time to go over every present, but let’s just say that everyone was very happy. I hope you enjoy some of the photos in the gallery.
Click here to see all the photos on SmugMug
Technology,Tuesday, December 18, 2007
At my workplace, Toshiba, they introduced a very cool robotic dinosaur as something every employee should buy. Why? Because each dinosaur has 8 Toshiba microprocessor inside that give it it’s artificial intelligence and lifelike movement and interaction with the world. At $350 it’s not a cheap toy, but it is definitely not your average robot. Probably the most lifelike robotic creature to date. Check out the Ugobe website to learn more about this robot. They are also being sold at places like Sharper Image, Amazon.com, Best Buy, etc. With all the Toshiba microprocessor’s inside it will actually help pay the bills at the Lombardi household if the worldwide sales are big 
There are lots of videos and pictures on the following website so you can get a good idea what it does.
Click her to see Ugobe the Baby Dinosaur
Hammacher Schlemmer is selling it with a lifetime gaurantee, claiming you can get a refund if you are ever disatisfied in your entire life! They also have discount code you can enter to get $30 off. Coupon code is HOLAFS2
Click Here to see it at Hammacher Schlemmer
Christianity,Monday, December 17, 2007
One wonderful thing that happens when becoming a Christian is that you join a body of believers that spans centuries of time. There are now approximately 2000 years where Christians have walked the same path towards a closer and deeper relationship with the God who sent His Son Jesus Christ to be our Savior. Throughout these years, God has raised men with extraordinarily gifts to teach. Although many of them have passed away since then, they have left their writings. However, their writing will be of no benefit to us unless someone publishes them. Fortunately, R.C. Sproul formed a publishing company called Reformation Trust and he also purchase Soli Deo Gloria publication and is continuing to keep some of these writing in circulation. In particular, he is republishing some of the great puritan writers. He has a very fascinating article that overviews the reasons to read the Puritans and he also published a book which is a guide to the Puritans.
Click here to read why to read the Puritans.
Click Here for the Book titled “Meet the Puritans”
Christianity,Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Some of you may remember when National Geographic had produced some shows about the lost Gnostic gospel called the Gospel of Judas. I wouldn’t write about this if I didn’t think it was important, but in my very own family, I’ve heard my mother claim that they are discovering new scripture and the Bible is being rewritten. This is undoubtedly the influence of National Geographic’s work on the Gnostic gospel of Judas where the National Geographic Society put forward the idea that the Biblical text needs to be revised according to this new discovery.
Let’s first of all understand that the gnostic gospels are not a new discovery. During the early church, shortly after the death of Christ, a sect of people known as the Gnostics were already developing their own teachings that were contrary and opposed to the teachings of the Christians. They were known for their distortions and false teachings in the early church and it of course followed that none of their writings were considered to have any authority or claims to be God’s Word. It would be equivalent to taking the writings of some quack doctor who is clearly fraudulent to everyone in his midst and trying to get the medical professionals to adopt his methods. It just doesn’t happen. Yet we know very well, that nevertheless, people become victims of these quack doctors despite the obviousness to everyone else. So it is with the Gnostic gospels. The early church clearly recognized their fraudulent nature and they were never even considered for a moment for inclusion into the Bible.
So now we have National Geographic that finds this text and makes major headlines about it’s discovery, claiming that it contains hidden revelation that will shake the foundations of the Bible. Well, it turns out that this landmark discovery by National Geographic was never release for peer review by scholars near and far. They had kept it to themselves for translation and interpretation by only themselves. However, after they had aired their shows about the Gospel of Judas and after many of the public has already become convinced of their claims, the National Geographic has finally released the text for review by the public.
Now here’s the shocker (with a little sarcasm), the National Geographic society made previous errors in translating the text. Even people who are not Christians, but know the original languages are saying that Judas was not being portrayed as a hero in the text, but as a demon. And of course, the list of errors goes on. In short, National Geographic seems to have a bias against Christianity in this fiasco of attacking the credibility of the Bible using text that they did not allow for extensive review by professionals near and far. They released false information to the public, leading the public to believe them. I used to think National Geographic was a responsible organization that is good for education of our children, but it is clear that they cannot be trusted to give truthful information, especially when it comes to information about the most important truths relating to God and Jesus Christ. But Christian’s should not be surprised, these attacks on the Bible will continue.
I’m thankful that in the end, the information has been released and that the Bible once again comes out a victor against yet another attack. We can be thankful that God has preserved His Word for the generations and it will always prove itself as authentic and authoritative. And the proper response is to believe and trust in our Saviour Jesus Christ, take up our cross and follow Him.
For more on this story, click here to read Albert Mohler’s article.
