James's Weblog

“I think my Facebook account has been hacked. Sorry everyone.”

Anyone who uses Facebook, and has a decent number of Facebook friends, will see this message from time to time.

People get confused about exactly what’s happened, and therefore how to prevent this from happening and how to fix this if it does.

The key thing to understand is that there are two distinct things that can happen to you: Hacked, and cloned.

Facebook Hacked

This is when someone else is able to log in to your Facebook account.

In Acts 23:12-22, Paul is imprisoned in Jerusalem, when a group of over 40 young men take an oath not to eat until they have killed him. They plan to request him to be taken for an audience at the Sanhedrin, and to ambush it en route. Paul's nephew hears of the plot, tips off the military commander, and Paul is extricated at night to Caesarea to foil their plot.

A little more from David Gooding’s book, True to the Faith.

Why is the section from Acts 19:21-28:31 so long, taking about a third of the book?

Because on trial is not just the question of whether Paul took a Gentile into the temple, but the gospel itself, and Paul as apostle to the Gentiles.

I have long found David Gooding's book, True to the Faith, a really helpful look at the book of Acts, mapping out how Luke's story unfolds and how it teaches us in the process.

As I look at chapters 19-28, he introduces his section on this with the following really helpful paragraph (page 338 in my 1990 edition; I'm not sure how much material has been added by the currently in-print 2013 edition to move the page numbers on):

Drupal no longer releases a new version of Core when an upstream dependency fixes a security vulnerability. It is the responsibility of site maintainers to keep track of security advisories for all such dependent libraries. That is no small task, and a way to automate this is needed. This post looks into how this can be done.

I'm preparing to preach on Mark 13 in a couple of Sundays time, and find myself once again reaching for R T France's excellent commentary on Mark.

Garmin is about to release the next generation of their running watches: The Forerunner 255 and the Forerunner 955. As I write, these aren't available for another 4-8 weeks. But it seems the Forerunner 245 has been marked down in anticipation. This prompts me to do what I've been meaning to do, and review the 245.

I'm greatly enjoying reading Against Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Beings in Relation to Communal Identity and the Moral Discourse of Ephesians by Daniel Darko (published 2020 by Hippo Books).

He explores the significance of the spiritual powers in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, suggesting that we in the West often don't feel the full force of the letter's message because we are not atuned to see this as important.

Here are a few jottings from chapter 1, the introduction.

Recently, someone asked my advice. They had been asked to present a one hour session on how evangelicals do theology.

It's not hard to think of things to say if someone asked about the content of evangelical theology. We'd talk about our distinctive doctrine of Scripture, of sin, of the atonement, of judgement and so on. There are particular hallmarks that have arisen over the centuries that mark out what evangelicals do when it comes to theology.

Most Christians have weeks when it's hard work to discipline themselves to get up and worship with their church family on a Sunday.

I love these words from Robert Murray McCheyne, written in 1836, that quaintly and yet compellingly encourage us to make the effort.

If this struggle is you, let me encourage you: Come, and callibrate your watch!