Jeff Ling

From the J.C. Ryle Quotes page today:

The Christianity which is from the Holy Spirit will always have a very deep view of the sinfulness of sin. It will not merely regard sin as a blemish and misfortune, which makes men and women objects of pity, and compassion. It will see in sin the abominable thing which God hates, the thing which makes people guilty and lost in his Maker’s sight, the thing which deserves God’s wrath and condemnation. It will look on sin as the cause of all sorrow and unhappiness, of strife and wars, of quarrels and contentions, of sickness and death – the curse which cursed God’s beautiful creation, the cursed thing which makes the whole earth groan and struggle in pain. Above all, it will see in sin the thing which will ruin us eternally, unless we can find a ransom, – lead us captive, except we can get its chains broken, – and destroy our happiness, both here and hereafter, except we fight against it, even unto death.

~ J.C. Ryle

Tract: Authentic Religion

How grateful I am for God’s common grace that He extends to men. Things like the kindness shown to this little boy and his own industry and ingenuity are so encouraging.

“The goal of common grace is not to perfect nature, but to restrain sin and animate civic virtues and arts, so that culture may fulfill its own important but limited, temporal, and secular ends, while God simultaneously pursues the redemptive aims of His everlasting city.” – Michael Horton

Wonderful song accompanied by a powerful visual narrative. We showed this in our worship service this morning.

Happy Easter!

“These words spoke Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you: as you have given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.” John 17:1, 2

The certain glorification with Jesus of every believer is a truth as much involving the honor of God, as it does the present comfort and future happiness of the church. The opposite sentiment—the possibility of a child of God falling short of eternal glory (a doctrine, let it be observed, at total variance with the entire Scriptures of truth), by unhinging the soul from God, and throwing it back completely upon itself, must necessarily lead to low and dishonoring views of the Divine character; while it begets in the mind a spirit of bondage, and a sense of the most painful apprehension, both equally inimical to a healthy and fruitful Christianity.

But the most solemn, I may say awful, light in which the doctrine of the believer’s final insecurity presents itself is, that it casts a thick veil over the glory of Immanuel. It touches every perfection of his being. Oh could the dear saints of God, thus tossed in the troubled sea of doubt, and thus agitated with a “fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation,” but be brought to see how the Jesus whom they love is wounded, dishonored, and shorn of His glory by this unscriptural tenet, would they not unhesitatingly renounce it as leading to a result so fearful? Can that, I earnestly ask, be a doctrine of Divine revelation, which tends in the slightest degree to shade the glory of Christ? If one of those given to Him of His Father—one whose sins He carried, whose curse He bore, whose soul He has renewed by the grace of His Spirit—were permitted finally and eternally to perish, where would be His glory? where the glory of His truth? where the glory of His power? where the glory of His love? where the glory of His work? Gone! Every perfection of His Divine being would be impeached, and every beam of His Divine glory would be tarnished.
But all shall be brought safely to heaven. Hark, how distinctly and authoritatively He pleads for this, their crowning blessing, when on the eve of His mysterious passion, and about to spring from His cross to His throne. “Father, I will that they also whom You have given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory.” Sublime prayer!—comprehensive and tender petition! How did the Head long to have with Him, where He was, each member of His body! Having had fellowship with Him in His humiliation, it was His desire that they should have fellowship with Him in His glory.

And this He asks not as a gift, but claims as a right. In virtue of His covenant engagement with the Father, His full satisfaction to Divine justice, His perfect obedience to the Divine law, His finished redemption of His people, He reverently bows at the mercy-seat, and pours out His full soul, and unburdens His loving heart, in the most sublime petition that ever ascended from mortal lip: “Father, I will that they also whom You have given me be with me where I am.”

And mark the reason why—”that they may behold my glory.” Consummation of glory!—overflowing cup of bliss!—height of perfect holiness! Was it the parting charge of Joseph to His brethren—”You shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that you have seen; and you shall haste and bring down my father here”? Our Joseph, with love infinitely more intense, desires that all His brethren be brought to heaven, that they may behold His glory there—the glory of His unveiled Deity—the glory of His glorified humanity—and the glory to which, as Mediator, His Father has advanced Him.

Be sure to watch this full screen!

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
(Psalm 19:1-6 ESV)

The really great news here is that these services even exist. We all knew that, given the polifieration of smart phones, high speed internet and massive storage operations, that the cloud was going to be a reality and now it is in a big way. On the storage side of things you’ve had services like Carbonite but one of the major drawbacks of services like that is that they refuse to store anything on their servers that is not on your computer’s internal hard drive.  For those with significant collections of music this is entirely unrealistic. As for streaming, forget it.

Enter Google and Amazon. I’ve been using both and I’m excited about the possibilities these services offer. The jury is still out on who has the best service primarily because Google is still in beta stage. Uploads are currently limited although I’m sure that will change and a pricing package similar to Amazon’s will be offered. Both services do an adequate job of delivering your content to your desktop and have standard playlist and shuffle options. What sets them apart from each other? Here is my analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the these cloud storage and streaming sites:

 Google Music (Beta)

Pro:

• The Android app: I have found it to load faster than Amazon’s cloud storage which will be important for impatient listeners.
• Free for now – although that will change soon.
• Ability to edit album and song info after uploading. This is huge! Amazon does not offer this at the moment and it’s a serious omission. If things aren’t tagged correctly then you can edit the info on the spot rather than having to delete, retag and upload. Amazon does a particularly poor job of matching artwork with uploads so, unless you’ve got the right artwork already embedded you can get some really bizarre match-ups. With Google Music you can simply change the graphic inside the system. This feature is the single biggest thing Google Music has going for it. I’ve had to repair and replace too much on Amazon so if you’re going to use their service, get a good tagger program and do the prep work beforehand. Even then you’ll occasionally miss something and then will need to repair and reload.

Con:

• Limited storage- but that will change. If the pricing plans are equivalent to Amazon then that’s a big mark in Google Music’s favor.
• The interface – not as nice looking as Amazons and a tad awkward. Hopefully that’s being re-tooled.
• Upload time- Your mileage may differ but I have found Amazon’s upload times to be much faster than Google’s. Not a real big deal long as you’re willing to start large uploads and walk away for awhile.
• No social media sharing – Really? Surely they are going to fix that. How can I narcissistically inform the world of what I’m listening to?

Amazon Cloud Player

Pro:

• Upload time – Amazon is really fast on the upload/download side. You can upload a ton of music in a relatively short time.
• Pricing and Storage- Amazon is bundling unlimited free music storage with a fee for storing files like pictures and documents. Kinda odd but who can complain about 20 bucks a year for 20 gigs of file storage and unlimited gigs for music storage? You can buy more file storage (up to 1000 gigs) if you need it but again – there is no limit on music regardless. If Google doesn’t match this or do better, then it’s no contest.
• The interface – looks good and easy to get around.
• Social Media Sharing – tell Facebook and Twitter what you’re listening to complete with a preview.

Con:

• The Android app – my experience has been that it’s slow loading and gets hung up easily.
•  No editing after uploading – like I said above, this is HUGE!  You’re limited to only moving files and renaming them. You can’t fix artist, genre, album name, etc.. and you can’t change the artwork. Why is this bad? Because Amazon has a blind monkey somewhere matching up album names with the correct artwork. So, if you don’t have it tagged right before uploading, you’re going to end up with some weird stuff.

For now I’m leaning heavily toward Google Music  because of the editing option. If Google gets the pricing right then its a done deal and hopefully they will get the social media links up and running. On the other hand – if Amazon will just add the editing feature then I think they leap into the lead even if Google matches the pricing. Good look, social media, fast uploads and editing – I’m there. Just fix that Android app.