spreading 3 angels' messages
Lots of pics put up in two files over in the left column – one is about my time spent May 6th – June 4th in Germany and Switzerland:
Germany and bucolic Switzerland pics and also the pics from 6 countries – Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia: Eastern Europe – mostly Romania and Georgian pics.
The greenness and farms in ultra-rich Switzerland always impress me, but the stronger Seventh-day Adventists are generally in Eastern Europe.
Lord willing, i will get on a bus in a few hours and ride around 28 hours from T’bilisi to Istanbul, stay there one nite, buy a air ticket, and make my way to Mumbai and then finally Pune before Sabbath comes around again. Everyone’s prayers are requested.
questions for bryce 6.1 users
I have gone thru 11 of the 12-lesson set of tutorials by Robinwood, and while feel that i now have an idea about how to use Bryce, i have a few questions about it and about Bryce in general.
Main pics of work i made is here: http://tinyurl.com/legvov
Here are a couple of examples:
intermediate lesson #5 ship on water
First of all: I’m well-versed in computers, and absolutely zero in graphical ability. I have used Paint Shop Pro for a few years, but am not good in using it. I can follow directions very well, but am not so good at grasping things i have never thot of before.
To me, this Robinwood tutorial is very well-done, but made for someone who is already well-versed in graphical terms and concepts. For someone used to painting with some computer program, the points, especially about drawing, would probably not be a problem.
Questions:
1. The hardest things i’ve found to do easily is to get the right camera scene i want, to point lights and cameras, and to select objects. These are very basic, and i wonder if anyone else has problems with these? To be more specific, often i want to have the camera a little bit above the object looking down at about a 45 angle, but often cannot get the camera to that position. Sometimes only “freehand” is available for use, and if i make a quick move, i’ve lost my scene forever. And to select objects, sometimes i find it impossible, even with using the “select all of type” controls at the bottom of the screen. Isn’t there some way to see a list of all objects available for selection, and just select what you want easily? In doing these lessons, many times i selected all, then get royally confused as the perspective camera got selected and materiallized etc. etc. – ha! Lights aren’t quite as bad as handling cameras, but how to point them exactly at what you want, like just the stern of a boat? Use nulls? And to perfectly line up something, it takes a long time of flipping thru all the camera views to get it done (if you don’t want to align).
2. The preset lighting is not very good. I want to see the colors (normally) on new objects i put into a scene, but because of poor preset lighting, sometimes the whole thing is in the shadow, and thus, black. So now i spend quite some time setting the sun’s angle just right in the SKY&FOG palette to make the colors come alive, but still it is not too good. (Note, after completing tut, i set my defaults quite differently than what the originals were. Why set the factory default so everything is mostly black?)
3. I have a terrible time getting the night sky to display showing stars. I’ve followed instructions from several tutorials, and have managed to get it once, but it should be very easy to do.
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In animation:
1. In doing the butterfly animation in intermediate lesson 1, my butterfly gets attached to the path heading backwards. It seems like it should be easy to disattach him from the path, orient correctly, and then attach him again, but even in doing that, it reverts right back to starting off heading backwards.
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I bot my ticket to go back to Istanbul for next Monday. That should be around a 30 hour bus ride Then i hope to stay there one day and buy a ticket to Mumbai (not by bus!) and get there on Thursday nite. If things go like planned, my travelling days will be over for quite a while after getting to Pune. ahhhhhhh, relax? NOT!
This Sabbath will be my last here in Georgia. I’ve been given time to do a study of the 1858 Great Controversy book at church in the afternoon, so hope i can get a good translator and many people will come. May God receive the glory when his people wake up and desire to follow him with all their hearts, souls, and minds.
I just got a email today from a Indian girl i’ve been in contact for almost 2 years saying she is getting baptized tomorrow. Her Hindu father and brother used to beat her and lock her in her room for reading the Bible and trying to go to church on sabbath, and the SDA pastors were afraid to baptize her because they feared trouble from the family, but she found a blind pastor who isn’t afraid, and she is joining the family of God tomorrow – sweet!!
Thank you, thank you Jesus 🙂
Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”
“I bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK Times.
“Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.” President Obama has pushed for the passage of the bill in the Senate and attended a G8 summit this week where he agreed to attempt to keep the Earth’s temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C.
Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.
“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.”
Full text at this link: www.climatedepot.com
Surely wide-awake Christians could all see this coming!? Lies in science will lead to slavery if not rejected. God will let them believe a lie if they wish, but it is to their own hurt. Only the truth as it is in Jesus will make us free.
To make an animation is extremely, extremely long work. Today i came across a thing on YouTube where the guy said to render 10 seconds of animation it took his 2 computers 12 hours. Mind you, this is AFTER all the hard work of setting up the props, lighting, moving them around etc. etc. What i have seen about rendering times, even on fast computers, it looks like it will take one computer almost 3 months of 24/7 processing just to get the final product! So yes, when the time arrives, i definitely will be looking at render farms. Of course i hope to buy 4 or 5 computers, and have a mini-network myself to cut down final render times.
Yesterday i ran across a site of a man who made a full-length CG film by himself. He has a nice diary/blog too, which is fascinating reading for someone like me who wishes to do something very similar. A link to there is Laurie Calvert’s one-man movie-making system Actually, he did have many others help with music and recording voices etc., but all the animation is done by himself. He goes at the amazing speed of 4 seconds of finished movie per day, working just 2 hours! I’m not joking, this is amazing, as professional animators only make about 4 seconds a week. OK, so his quality isn’t Pixar quality either, but his comments really strike home.
He talks about how THE STORY is the big thing, and he is not interested in technical stuff. He uses off-the-shelf characters, purchasing some from Daz3D etc., which is exactly what i’m planning to do. Why should i have to spend literally 2 years learning some software package before i can start producing my STORY? So i’m not leading-edge. I don’t care. I want something middle-of-the-road that looks decent enough to look at, without going over the top and working for days to find out how to use the sub-surface specular scattering particle generator! (ok, made that up, but you get the point)
He says: “So I am one man, one PC working for about 3 years. Stylised CGI. My first film ‘The War of the Starfighters’ will be similar in statistics to ‘Monsters of the Id’. It cost about 3000gbp, and was 1,350 shots long, 2,500 hours work, on average over 2 hours work a day saw 4 seconds of finished movie per day”. By comparison he notes: “‘Shrek’ used 500 computers, used 300 animators, took 4 years to make 1000 shots”.
He wrote the above in 2004 when planning the movie, and then when the movie was finished in 2006 he wrote this: “3rd June 2006 – Final version of film is finished pending any last minute changes. 864 days, 920 hours work so far. New music has been added and sounds mixed. 493 Gig used. The movie is looking and sounding really good. Had a Premiere to myself of the final version today. Might be a few months away from being available as it needs to get BBFC certification for release in the UK plus the DVDs need to be replicated. Next step is to talk to a Distributor. Fingers crossed. This film has cost just 700gbp to make.”
This is what i’ve felt, but is the first time i’ve seen it told anywhere: calvertfilm.fsnet.co.uk “The American CGI is what most of us are used to seeing but it doesn’t have to be this style. Remember character and stories, emotion and morals/ideas should be most important, so you can still make a great movie in a stylised way. Storytelling is the business we are in.” Yes sir! Lord, please help me. If people can spend so much time and energy on making something for this world, surely you will give me skill and wisdom to do it to lead others to your new world 🙂
June 30, 2009 The day basically started around 4:30am when i woke up with a suffocating feeling from having no air in my room, and scratching swarms of mosquito bites on my body. My friend and his father and i all go Alexandria (Romania), and wait for the Maxi Taxi (large minivan), that will take me to Giurgiu. While waiting with an umbrella in his hand, someone approaches the father and gives him some yogurt and pretzels. Seems to be a tradition here to give food to strangers when someone dies, so we are the lucky ones today. Actually, this slightly tangy yogurt is exactly the thing i needed to settle my stomach, and i enjoy a breakfast of picked-one-hour-earlier-apricots, yogurt, bread, and walnuts in the maxi taxi The mostly flat wheat fields, interspersed with grasslands with a flock of sheep every 10km or so, and flocks of geese a little more often, are punctuated by a huge, and i mean huge stork nest. They use the same nest every year, making it larger and larger, until it is hard to see how they stay attached to the cement poles (with a flat top) or chimneys that they balance them on.
The maxi taxi was 25 minutes late, and we arrive in Giurgiu around 8:10. I putter around trying to ask people about a bus across the border into Ruse, but they all tell me that there is no bus, only taxi. OK, i go to a taxi driver, and am taken aback when he writes on paper “150lei” (50usd). Wow, 50usd can buy quite a long distance bus ride. I go back to where the maxi taxi let me out, and the driver talks to his police friend about it who calls one of his friends who can speak a little English. He tells me it cost 9euro each way for tax across the bridge, so he needs 30euro, leaving “only” 12euro for himself. This is a scam if i ever saw it, but am concerned now. I can go all the way back up to Bucharest, and catch a bus from there to Sofia for cheaper than what i’m being told here (36usd). The thot tho of wasting a whole day, and spending a sleepless nite in Sofia doesnt appeal to me at all, so i offer 40usd. He agrees, and takes me to an exchange office, where they really just exchange – 1 General Grant for 2 Jacksons and 1 Hamilton. After handing him the money (i like to pay at the beginning), i get in on the LEFT side of the car. He tells me he worked 2 years in London, and bot this car there and drove it down here. He assures me he is a good driver, so i don’t need my seatbelt, but i buckle up anyway, and am happy i did as he drives in between the orange construction area cones – crazy in more ways than i thot, as i told him he was crazy when he poked my knee several times and said he’d take me all the way to Sofia for “only” 110euro. Definitely not amusing. We cross the Danube into Bulgaria, and the inspection people joke about a Romanian with an American, and soon we are in Ruse. All in all – 20 minutes.
While kicking myself for wasting God’s money like this, i go from bus company office to office looking for a place with a bus to Sofia. I find the one i saw on the internet for 10am, and while looking blankly around, a man comes up to me and speaks a bit of English. He is nice, and invites me to store my suitcase and big plastic bag in a room by the toilet while i go to the exchange office across from the train station. After i get 30usd exchanged into leva (it is interesting that the money is called “leu”, “lei”, “leva”, and “lira” in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey respectively) i head back to pay my 22leva for the 4:30 ride to Sofia. The man is there, and after i get my ticket we have a wonderful conversation. He is a Christian, single, and just 3 weeks younger than myself, and the toilet tax collector. This is a system that i despise, as it is a big waste of someone’s life to sit all day and collect a peepee tax. And it is humiliating to the person needing to go to the bathroom to have to shell out several coins to go. I don’t think it is just coincidence that all the rich countries in know in the world don’t require this tax, because their people have more productive things to do. I think God knew that i needed a lift after the ripoff taxi ride, and this man served very well to do just that. I even gave him a Great Controversy book, as he said he likes English. Just with seeing the title for the first chapter he turned to me and said how Satan was once so beautiful, but got proud, and he fell to this world. Sounds like he’s read the book already! May we meet in heaven.
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Merg spre casǎ, maşteaptǎ Tatál,
Doar o noapte, doar o noapte am de plâns.
E grea cǎrarea, dar nu îmi pasǎ,
Atât mie gândul, sajung acasǎ.
Merg spre casǎ, maşteaptǎ Tatál,
Doar o noapte, doar o noapte am de plâns.
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Here is a link giving detailed background information on this very serious corporate sin of our beloved Seventh-day Adventist church:
http://www.calltorepent.com/beach-1977
The corporate action of awarding the pope with a gold medal was the deciding one which prompted my mother to have her name removed from the Seventh-day Adventist church books in 1977. I do not agree with her decision, but have seriously considered for myself twice in my life if i should remove my name also. However, both times, the inescapable conclusion based on Revelation 3:14-22, and Ezekiel 9, is that this Seventh-day Adventist church is God’s only beloved church.
Jesus is calling his bride to repentance. We will heed the call?
I know this is overdue, but finally i got the pics i took in Japan and Korea up on this site. Look over on the left side column.
I still like Japan very much, but not sure if i love it like i used to. Perhaps that is all God’s will also, to tear my heart away from something i like personally, but doesn’t use my ablilities for God as much as i could elsewhere.
There are pics of the old Country Life Restaurant in Osaka. I worked there from 1989 until its close in December 1996. There are lots of pics of friends and English students – the kids really have grown in 3 years! (of course). There are a few pics of people i was able to study the 1858 Great Controversy with, and also with the people up in Saitama prefecture with a Spanish-speaking school. There is a picture of a Woody Woodpecker airplane in Okinawa, and then lots of pics of Everlasting Gospel Publishing Association people and offices.
I hope to go back to Japan some day, but only if the people there show more of a zeal to want to know the truth.
Writing this from Sofia bus terminal:
The meeting with the Bulgarian SDA office lasted 15 minutes, and i am quite hopeful that they will approve this project to have the book translated and printed 🙂 The secretary is the main translator it seems, and she also has a theology degree and was teaching hermeneutics of Ellen White last week! I left one English 1858 Great Controversy book, and she will take with the publishing director about translating and printing it. May God work on hearts to his glory.
Now to take another bus over to Istanbul, and then catch another one to T’bilisi…..
After a restful 10 days in Romania, staying in the countryside with the friend i met in Thailand, we got up early last Monday and drove several hours to meet a SDA printer. He was very kind and showed us his recent works, driving away any remaining fears i had that the quality might not be up to par here. It is amazing to see books printed just 10 years ago that look quite primitive, and see the first-world-class quality they are printing now! He even said that the glue binding was guaranteed by a German company for 50 years.
So now the problem is how to get the Romanian 1858 Great Controversy distributed….
We drove a few more hours to another place, and met a well-known SDA pastor. He talked kindly with us, and then let me stay at his home until the evening. He takes me to the Danube, where we look at the huge river flowing lazily by. His wife comments twice that it is rare to see it so calm. They also remind me how cold it gets here, when they say people come here to ice skate in the winter! They feed me lots of food, then take me to the bus which is parked in front of the Sofil hotel and leaves at 10:30pm for Chisanau, Moldova (costs 30ron – 10usd).
It really looks like the Lord planned it out for me to stay there a while with him and his family, so they could get a feel for what kind of work this is, and be comfortable with supporting this. It took him a while to understand that i just travel around trying to get this one book into the people’s hands, but finally he did understand, and now has agreed to be the main distributor/contact person for this book in all of Romania – praise God!
The bus let me out after a bumpy ride at 5am near the Central Market. I didn’t know anything, and just sat around looking at the pig and cow carcasses being lugged around and dripping on the pavement – pretty gross to see dogs lapping up blood before breakfast.
I had the address for the Moldovan SDA headquarters, but didn’t know quite how to get there. Fortunately a man with a pull-cart shop selling magazines and maps helped me. Actually, he could not figure out how to use the map, but let me look for it, and i found it quickly. Trolley bus number 9 took me there in 15 minutes. The building looks brand new, and includes a seminary.
I had not contacted anyone before arriving, as often i find that people do not understand what i am trying to do, and will not set up an appointment, but if i just arrive, they will take 10-15 minutes to talk with me. After praying, and entering, quickly i find a man who can speak English. He gets the publishing director, and they spend a bit over 5 minutes talking with me out in the lobby. The publishing director asks me twice “so what do you want us to do?” and i explain the same both times – that i’m working at getting this book spread around the world, and it will be printed soon in Romanian, and i just wanted to inform you. He finally seems to understand, and then tells me that the Ukrainian SDA has sent him some of the Russian language ones a few years earlier!
I spend a couple of hours in the toilet trying to sleep, as that was mostly impossible on the bus the nite before, and then take number 9 back to the city center where i stumble around looking like a tourist for a while, eat lunch on a park bench along the “high-fashion” road of Stephen the Great, then walk thru the market again, and down to the Gara de Nord bus center where a bus to Kiev costs around 23usd. There is a big man sitting next to me, and just when i think our legs are going to meld together, he gets up and sits in the back of the bus – whew! But now a new problem presents itself – just across the aisle is a lovely girl wearing not enough clothing. And every time the bus jolts, which is about every 5 nanoseconds, it is a trial. Fortunately, about 2 minutes later, she gets up and goes to the back of the bus too, and i thank God for not allowing me to be tempted above what i’m able 🙂
There is an old tank sitting in front of some bridge, and i think that it is something from some old war, but then see soldiers standing on the bridge with guns – ut oh. Then we go thru lots of border check points. I discover that this is the breakaway region of Moldova, called Trans nitzia or something like that. Ut oh, i read on the internet not to go thru this region, and thot that while the train did pass thru, the bus did not. Not correct. I read that they sometimes ask for large sums of money from foreign travellers, but we go thru lots of checkpoints with no problems.
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“The Great Controversy Between God and Man. Its Origin, Progress, and End” H. L. Hastings (1861)
B
As a book, this work, while clearly showing the biblical truth that God will take vengeance on the earth, is not an extraordinary work. What makes this book so extraordinary, is the title itself.
I first learned of the existence of this book a couple of years ago on the internet, by some people who were disaffected with the Seventh-day Adventist church, and who were trying to show how Ellen White copies her greatest work from someone else (Hastings). What is so striking, is that Hastings came out with his book in the spring of 1858, dating his Preface “January, 1858”, from Rochester N.Y. Ellen White had her “Great Controversy” vision at Lovett’s Grove, Ohio in May of the same year, giving credence to the view that perhaps she copied the title or even the contents when producing her own book.
But the contents of this book are very different from “The Great Controversy Between Christ and His Angels, and Satan and His Angels”. This book is focused on only one thing – showing how mankind has often rebelled against God, and how God has shown mercy in giving warnings to repent, and then, when the warnings go unheeded, how God destroys the rebellious. This one, single point is similar to Ellen White’s book, but her book is so much more comprehensive, showing the total view of sin in the universe before it started to after it is eliminated, that it is difficult to even compare the two. How anyone could believe that somehow Ellen White “copied” anything from this book is beyond rational thot.
The book reviewed here was downloaded and printed for me by a friend who found it in Google Books. It carries a published date of “1861”, and says “third thousand” on the cover, making me think that perhaps this is the third edition. It says it was “Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by H. L. Hastings” which makes me wonder then if the book was first printed in 1860, as it is unusual for a second or third edition to be entered. Currently, i do not know. I do know that this book has been reprinted and bound together with Ellen White’s book by the above-mentioned disaffected parties, and is available on Amazon.com.
The title itself clearly shows the theme — there is a “controversy” between God and man. Rightly so, even the Bible mentions a controversy God has with the nations in Jeremiah 25:31. And the book stays true to its theme thruout – showing how mankind must repent and turn to God, or God will destroy him – that these are the only two possible outcomes of the great controversy.
The book seems to be written to combat the prevailing error among Christians of his day, that the world was getting better and better and then would naturally usher in a millenium of peace here on this earth. Writing this in 2009, i really doubt that hardly any Christians believe in this error today. It is just too clear that things are not generally getting better morally, but worse. So while the message contained is still correct, the object of writing an entire book showing that, yes, God will destroy this earth one day, is a foregone conclusion among nearly all Christians now.
On the other hand, Ellen White’s book is so much more comprehensive, that it is almost impossible to compare the two. She writes first of Satan in heaven before his fall, the fall of Adam and Eve, how the plan of salvation was devised, Christ’s life, the disciples, the Christian church thru the centuries, the Advent movement, the particulars of the Sanctuary and the 3 Angel’s Messages, Satan’s plans for the end time in making his angels appear before us, the Shaking, how important the Sabbath is, the Loud Cry, the death decree, God delivering his people, the saints going to heaven, returning to this earth after the 1000 years, the last struggle by Satan and his followers, the lake of fire, and the never-ending enjoyment of the righteous in a universe completely free from sin. I’ve read Ellen White’s book 250 times or more, and wish to read more as i find something new just about every time i go thru it, but Hastings’ book is enough with just one reading.
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first artwork i ever did 🙂