"Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands" (Isaiah 42:12, KJV)
This blog is dedicated to the glory of God, who has redeemed a wretched sinner like me through the blood of Jesus Christ. I am but an unprofitable servant of His (Luke 17:10) who lives in the islands of Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud, also known as New Zealand.
The blog is named after the verse quoted at the start of this inaugural entry. I have no idea what will become of it or how long it will last. Nor do I know whether anyone will even read it. That is all in the Lord's hands. Let it reach those whom He wants it to reach, and if that means five people, 500 or 5,000, it's all good as long as His will is done. The blog is intended primarily for Christian readers. Non-Christian readers probably won't get a lot out of it, although I do intend for them to get the Gospel here. I aim for every post I make here to be from a Biblical perspective, but a number of posts will also have a Kiwi flavour. Some posts will examine issues (either Biblical ones or current events like the COVID-19 pandemic). Others will include warnings or exhortations. There might be a bit of personal stuff here and there as well (although I will mainly use events in my own life to illustrate a point I want to make, rather than simply talking about myself for the sake of it).
I believe in freedom of speech (although of course there are certain legal limits such as laws against slander). So I will allow as many comments as possible, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with me, and also regardless of whether I find them personally offensive. However, I will ruthlessly suppress any spam. Also, I'll remove any blatant hate speech. Well, if you want to hate on me, I probably won't delete that (unless you're making malicious and false accusations), but if you want to say, call for violence against a certain group or something, I will absolutely shut that down. (I don't pretend to be an expert on trolling, but I know that's one thing trolls can do.)
I only have so much time to devote to this, so probably won't post that often. (Well, I may go through phases of posting quite a lot, and then other periods of not posting much.) Also, I probably won't respond to that many comments (especially if people are trying to provoke me or engage me in arguments - reasoned discussion is fine though). Please endeavour to be respectful and courteous at all times, no matter how strongly you may disagree with my perspective on something.
While this blog is intended for God's glory and not my own, I have used my real name in creating it. In most of my favourite Christian Web sites or blogs, the authors use their real names. Also, using another name or being anonymous would feel sort of cowardly. However, I won't give out any contact details. That would apply even if this blog were on a completely secular subject. Due to one bad experience in particular, I am very conscious about online safety.
To conclude this introductory post, all Bible quotes in this blog will be taken from the King James Bible, which is copyright-free and God's preserved Word in the English language. Modern Bible translations will NOT be used here unless I happen to be writing a post about the KJV vs. modern translations (which I probably will at some stage, because using the right Bible is important, but also due to the fact that I am a translator myself - not a Bible translator, just regular commercial stuff, but still, I understand something of the translation process and language in general fascinates me). Quotes from other sources will be attributed and come under fair use. While I shall endeavour to be truthful, accurate and doctrinally sound at all times, I am human and can make mistakes. So please don't just take everything I say at face value, but search the Scriptures for yourself and do your own research generally. That's about all for now. Whoever reads this (if anyone), may the Lord bless you.
